THE PENTATEUCH, 



PROGRESSIVE REVELATIONS OE GOD TO MEN. 



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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by 

REV. HENRY COWLES, D.D., 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. 



PREFACE. 



Mr reasons for treating the Pentateuch topically rather than 
textually will be obvious. Criticism on the original text is 
rarely needed. There is seldom the least occasion to aid the 
reader in following the line of thought or the course of argu- 
ment. The demand here is rather for the discussion and due 
presentation of the great themes of the book. My plan has 
therefore aimed to meet this demand, discussing these themes 
critically so far as seemed necessary either because of their in- 
trinsic nature or because of popular objections or misconcep- 
tions ; and always practically so far forth as to show the import- 
ant moral bearings of these themes as revelations of God to man. 
It has been, however, my purpose to explain all the difficult, 
doubtful, or controverted passages. 

The modern objections to Genesis, more or less related to true 
science, have been brought under special examination because 
they are at present eliciting so much public attention. Let all 
real truth be welcomed and held in honor, whether revealed in 
the works of God or in his word. It is knowledge of God that we 
seek; some of which we learn through his works of creation or 
of providence ; more through his revealed word. It behooves us 
to dismiss all apprehensions lest these diverse forms of divine 
revelation may come into real conflict, and equally, all fear lest 
the Bible should be compelled to recede as Science advances. 

The points of contact between sacred and profane history and 
antiquities have been carefully examined, both for their own 
intrinsic interest and for the incidental confirmation which 
they bring to the sacred volume. 

(iio 



IV PREFACE. 

As will appear in the Introduction I have had an eye some- 
what to the idea of progress in these successive steps of divine 
revelation — yet with an aim not so much to prove a point dis- 
puted as to illustrate a fact sometimes overlooked ; hoping thus 
to heighten the reader's interest. 

This wonderful grouping of those events of the earliest ages 
of time, given us of God through the masterly hand of Moses, is 
for every reason worthy of profoundest study. In the humble 
hope that these pages may serve to obviate old difficulties ; sug- 
gest new aspects of truth ; inspire fresh zeal in this study ; and 
enhance the spiritual profit of every reader — this volume is sub- 
mitted to the Christian public. Henry Cowles. 

Oberun, O., October, 1873. 



CONTENTS. 



Introduction, p. 1. 

CHAPTEK I. 
Creation, p. 9. 

Naturally the first fact revealed ; Its moral lessons, 9 ; 

The origin of this record and the manner of its revelation to 

men, 12 ; 

Nature and the supernatural, 13 ; Theories on the origin of life, 14 ; 

The sense of the word " day " in Gen. 1 : 16 ; 

Argued (1) From the laws of language, 17 ; (2) From the narrative 

itself, 18; 

Objection from the law of the Sabbath, 21; 

(3) From Geological facts and their bearings on the question, 22; 

Prominent points of harmony between Genesis and Geology, 25; 

Does "Create" (Gen. 1: 1) refer to the original production of 

matter? 26; 

The relation of v. 1 to v. 2, and to the rest of the chapter, 29 ; 

The work of the fourth day, 31 ; 

The sense of the record as to the origin of life, vegetable and 

animal, 32 ; 

On God's " making man in his own image," 33; 

The relation of Gen. 2: 4-25 to Gen. 1: 35. 

CHAPTER II. 

Invariability of "Kind" in the Vegetable and Animal 
Kingdom, 37 ; 
The theory of Mr. Darwin, 38; The issue between Darwin and 
Moses, 38; 

Darwin's five main arguments, 39; Brief replies, 40; 
Objections bearing generally against Darwin's scheme, 43 ; 

(1) It requires almost infinite time back of the earliest traces or 
possibilities of life, 43 ; 

(2) Requires what Nature does not give— a close succession of 
animal races, differing but infinitesimally from each other, 43 ; 

(3) His argument is essentially materialistic and is therefore false, 45 ; 

(4) It ignores man's intellectual and moral nature, 46 ; 

(5) It ignores or overrides the law of nature by which hybrids are 
infertile, 46 ; 

(6) This scheme is in many points revolting to the common sense 
of mankind, 46 ; 

(7) It is recklesss of the authority of revelation, 48. 



(v) 



VI CONTENTS. 

THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 

Two main questions : (1) Is the liuman family older than Adam? 49; 
(2) How far back was Adam ? 

The argument for man's high antiquity, (1) From traces of his 
skeleton, 50 ; (2) From his tools and works, 52 ; (3) From the tradi- 
tions and chronologies of the old nations, 59. 

CHAPTEE III. 

Hebrew Chronology, 60; 

From birth of Christ back to the founding of Solomon's Tem- 
ple, 60 ; 

First disputed period — that of the Judges, 60; second do.; 
that of the sojourn in Egypt, 62; third do.; between Terah and 
Abraham, 64 ; fourth do. ; from the creation to the flood, 66 ; fifth 
do. ; from the flood to the call of Abraham, 68. 

CHAPTEE IV. 

Antiquity of Man Resumed, 72; 
On the Antiquity of Egypt, 72 ; 

The date of Menes, its first king, and of the pyramids, 74 ; 
Unity of the human race : Were there races of pre- Adamic men, 
now extinct ? 75 ; 
Are the present living races descendants of the same first pair? 75; 

CHAPTEE V, 
The Sabbath, 77 ; 

As old as Eden ; made for man as a race. 

CHAPTEE VI. 

The Events of Eden, 81 ; 

Is the description of man's fall symbolic or historic ? 81 ; 

The moral trial, 84 ; The temptation, 87 ; The fall, 88. ' 

The curse ; the first installment of the penalty for transgression, 89 ; 

The first promise, 90. 

CHAPTEE VII. 

From the Fadx to the Flood, 92. 

Notes on special passages, Gen. 4:1, "I have gotten a man— the 
Lord," 92 ; Gen. 4 : 6, 7— words of the Lord to Cain, 92 ; Gen. 4 : 23, 24, 
the song of Lamech, 92 ; Abel's offering and the origin of sacri- 
fices, 93; The great moral lessons of the antediluvian age, 95. 

CHAPTEE VIII. 
The Flood, 99 ; 

Its moral causes, 99 ; Its physical causes, 101 ; Was this flood uni- 
versal ? 102 ; («) as to the earth's surface, (6) as to its population ; 
Traditions of a great deluge, 105. 



CONTEXTS. VII 

CHAPTER IX. 

Fkom the Flood to the call of Abraham, 107; 

The law against murder and its death-penalty, 107 ; The prophecy 
of Xoah, 106; The genealogy of the historic nations, 110; Babel 
and the confusion of tongues, 112. 

CHAPTER X. 

Abraham, 114; 

His personal history ; the divine purposes in the new system, in- 
augurated with him ; 

Concentration of moral forces; a more definite covenant between 
God and his people ; 
Utilizing the family relation, 116 ; 

Developing a great example of the obedience of faith, 120 ; (a) In leav- 
ing his country at God's call, 120 ; (b) In waiting long but hopefully 
for his one son of promise, 120 ; (c) In obeying the command to 
offer this son a sacrifice, 121 ; 
God's revelations to Abraham progressive, 122 ; 
The missionary idea in this system— blessings to all the na- 
tions, 125 ; 

The Messiah included in these promises, 126 ; 
Sodom and Gomorrah, 12S ; 
The angel of the Lord, 130. 

CHAPTER XI. 

The Patriarchs, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, 132 ; 

Isaac, 132; Jacob and Eethel. 133; Jacob at Mahanairn, 137; The 

struggle of prayer ; The points and grounds of this conflict ; The 

law of prevailing prayer, 140 ; 

Jacob and Joseph, 143; Developments of personal character, 144 ; 

Joseph in Egypt, 146; The hand of God in this history— seen in 

the sufferings of the innocent, 155 ; 

The hand of God in overruling sin for good, 158 ; 

The purposes of God in locating Israel in Egypt, 160; 

Ancient Egyptian history and life confirms Moses, 102 ; 

Special passages considered: 

Going down into Sheol, Gen. 37: So; Jacob"s benedictions upon 

his sons, Gen. 49, 168 ; The Scepter of Judah, Gen. 49 : 10, 169 ; 

The less readable portions of Genesis, 171 ; Close of Genesis, 172. 

CHAPTER XII. 
Exodus— 

The oppression, 173 ; Moses, 175 ; His great mission, 179 ; 

The ten plagues, 185 : 

These plagues supernatural, 1S7 ; Several of them specially adapted 

to Egypt, 189; The case of the magicians, 190; The shape of the 

demand upon Pharaoh to let the people go, 193 ; 

The hardening of Pharaoh's heart, 194; 

History of the case 195 ; What is said of God's purpose in it, 203 ; 

Light on this case from God's revealed character, 204. 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XIII. 
The Passover, 206 ; 

Consecration of all first-born, 208; 

The long route to Canaan, 210; The march and the pursuit, 211 ; 
The guiding pillar of cloud and of fire, 212 ; The locality of the 
Red Sea crossing, 216. 

CHAPTER XIV. 
The Historic Connections or Moses with Pharaoh and Egypt, 217. 

CHAPTER XV. 

The Events near and at Sinai, 223 ; 

The manna, 223; Rephidim ; water by miracle, 226; The battle 

with Amalek, 229 ; Jethro, 230 ; 

The Scenes at Sinai, 232 ; 

The national covenant ; The giving of the law, 234 ; 

The moral law, given from Sinai, 236 ; 

To be distinguished from " the statutes and judgments," 237; 

The commandments considered severally ; (1) 238; (2) 239 ; (3) 241 ; 

(4) 241; (5) 243; (6-9) 243; (10) 245; 

Progress in the revelations of God to man, 246. 

CHAPTER XVI. 

The Hebrew Theocracy: 

The supreme power, 251 ; The powers of Jehovah's Vicegerent, 253 ; 
The General Assembly and their Elders, 254 ; The scope afforded 
for self-government, democracy, 255 ; The fundamental principles 
of this system, 258 ; Its union of Church and State, 259 ; Its princi- 
ples and usages in regard to war, with notice of the war-commis- 
sion against the doomed Canaanites, 261; The grant of Canaan, 
and the command to extirpate the Canaanites, 262. 

CHAPTER XVII. 

The Civii. Institutes of Moses, or the Hebrew Code of Civil 
Law: 
General view of it, 270 ; Analysis of the crimes condemned, 273; 
Ci-imes against God: 

Idolatry? 273; Perjury, 274; Presumptuous sins, 275; Violations of 
the Sabbath, 276 ; Magic arts, 276 ; 
Crimes against parents and rulers, 279 ; 
Crimes against person and life, i. e. crimes of blood, 280 ; 
Cities, of refuge, 282; Murder by unknown hands, 284 ; 
Crimes against chastity, 285 ; 
Statutes to protect rights of property, 286 ; 

Statutes against usury, 288 ; Statutes for the relief of the poor, 289 ; 
Crimes against reputation, 292. 



CONTENTS. IX 

CHAPTEE XVIII. 

Civil, Institutes of Moses Concluded: 
Hebrew servitude, 294 ; 

Man-stealing, 294 ; No rendition of fugitives, 295 ; Severe personal 
injuries entitled to freedom, 295; Periodical emancipation, 296; 
Religious privileges of servants, 298 ; The slavery that existed be- 
fore Moses, 299 ; The condition of Israel in bondage in Egypt, 299; 
The Jubilee, 300 ; 

Its bearing upon foreign servants, 301 ; Meaning of '* bond-serv- 
ant," 302; Servants of foreign birth, 302 ; 
Judicial Procedure, 304 ; 

Judges ; The seat of justice, 305 ; The processes of prosecution, 305 ; 
Advocates ; of witnesses, 305 ; 
Punishments, 306 ; 

Fines, 306; Sin and trespass offerings, 307; Stripes, 307; Excom- 
munication, 308 ; Modes of capital punishment, 308 ; Disgrace after 
death, 308; Judicial procedure and punishment summary, 308; 
Statutes without penalties, 309 ; 
Two Historic Questions : 

(a) How far is this system indebted to Egypt? 311 ; 
(6) How far have the best civil codes of the most civilized nations 
been indebted to this Hebrew code ? 314 ; 
Progressive revelations of God in this code, 319. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

The Religious System of the Hebrews, 321 ; 

Classification of sacrifices, 322 ; Choice of animals for sacrifice, 323 ; 

The scenes of sacrifice, 324; The significance of sacrifices, 325; Of 

the portion taken as food, 326 ; Special sacrifices, 327 ; 

Sacred times and seasons, 327 ; 

The three great festivals, 32S; The Feast of Pentecost, 328; The 

Feast of Tabernacles, 329 ; The great day of Atonement, 331 ; 

Sacred Edifices and Apparatus, 334 ; 

The Sacred Orders, 335 ; Present value of the Mosaic ritual, 336 ; Its 

lessons on the blood of atonement, 338 ; That these lessons are steps 

of progress in the revelation of God to men, 340. 



CHAPTER XX. 

Historic Events of Hebrew History from Sinai to the Jor- 
dan, 342; 
The golden calf, 342 ; The intercession of Moses, 344 ; The Lord re- 
veals his name and glory, 346 ; Incidents connected with this idol- 
worship, 350; Lessons from Moses on prayer, 353; Taberah and 
Kibroth-hataavah, 354 ; Miriam and Aaron envious of Moses, 355 ; 
Kadesh-barnea and the unbelieving spies. 356 ; Rebellion of Koran 
and his company, 360 ; The fiery serpent and the brazen one, 363 ; 
Balak and Balaam, 364 ; Balaam's prophecies, 367 ; His prayer, 
368. 



X CONTENTS. 

CHAPTEK XXI. 

On the last Four Books of the Pentateuch: 

Their method and subject-matter, 375 ; Leviticus, 376 ; Numbers, 376 ; 

Deuteronomy, 377 ; Deut. 26, 378 ; The prophet like Moses, Deut. 18, 

38U ; The blessings and the curses, 383; The last words of Moses, 

384 ; Deut. 32, 385 ; Moses blesses the tribes, Deut. 33, 394 ; Death 

and character of Moses, 401 ; 

The Mosaic system and the future life, 403 ; 

Progressive developments of truth and of God, 412. 



INTEODUOTIOK 



THE REVELATIONS OF GOD TO MEN PROGRESSIVE. 

It is supposable that God might have made his entire 
written revelation of himself to men at once, through one 
inspired prophet and one only ; in one definite locality 
(Eden or Jerusalem), and all brought within a twelve- 
month. But he did not deem this the wisest way. He 
preferred to speak at considerable intervals of time: — 
through a long succession of " holy men of old ; " " at 
sundry times and in diverse manners " (Heb. i : 1). 
Among the choice results of this progressive method 
we may name the following : (1.) That by means of it 
God made large and admirable use of history. This was 
revealing himself to men, not simply by his words but 
by his works. In ways which men could not well mis- 
take, he w r as thus able to manifest himself as the God 
of nations ; also as the God of families ; and not least, 
as the God of individual men. It was vital to human 
welfare that he should place himself before men as 
being not a heathen Brumha, sunk in unconscious 
sleep for ages, but as the All-seeing, ever-active One, 
exercising a real government over men, ruling in 
equity and yet with loving-kindness ; ever present amM 
all their activities and impressing himself upon the 
thought and the heart of the race. In this line of 
policy how admirably did he give promises to his serv- 
ants to inspire their faith in himself; then prove that 
faith through years and ages of trial and delay ; but at 
last confirm his word by its signal fulfillment! By 

(1) 



2 INTRODUCTION. 

what other method could He so effectually reveal him- 
self as sl personal God — the personal Friend of his trustful 
children — evermore worthy of their supreme confidence, 
whether they could or could not see at once all the rea- 
sons of his ways ? 

His providential rule over nations as such found in 
this method ample scope for the fullest illustration. 
The record of this ruling in the ministrations of pros- 
perity and adversity ; in the rise and the ruin of great 
nations through the lapse of the world's early centuries, 
constitute a marvelously rich portion of this progress- 
ive revelation of God to man. A Bible made up of 

words from God without any deeds of God would be open 
to dangerous misunderstanding and thus might in great 
measure fail of its purpose. At best it would be tame 
and unimpressive compared with the method God has 
chosen of revealing himself largely in actual works at 
innumerable points along the ages for more than four 
thousand years. 

(2.) Again; no small gain accrued from the large 
number and various qualities of the holy men through 
whom God spake. The personal blessing to themselves 
was too rich to be limited to any one man. Eather let 
it be shared by many scores of men, standing forth be- 
fore their respective generations age after age from 

Adam down to him of Patmos. We may also note the 

large range of diversity in their personal character and 
in their endowments as authors. How varied were the 
circumstances of their lives and the moral trials which 
were the refiner's fire to their spiritual life! How 
abundantly by this means did their personal experi- 
ences illustrate the ways of God with those who come 
nearest to him in the fullness of heart communion! 
How many chapters ar£ thus provided of the most re- 
liable most varied and easily applied Christian experi- 
ence ! 



INTRODUCTION. 3 

By means of the diversity of inspired writers, the 
Bible is enriched with the charms of a large variety in 
style, as well as in the experiences of the Christian 
life. Among all the sacred penmen, no two minds are 
cast in the same mold. Poetry, eloquence, imagination, 
logic, sublimity, pathos — in what endless combinations 
do we find these gifts apportioned and manifested! 
How should we admire the wisdom which chose out 
men of gifts so diversified, and then adopted a method 
of inspiration which left each writer's mind to the un- 
restrained development of its own peculiar genius. 

(3.) Yet farther; the progressive historical method 
of making up the Bible opened the door widely for mir- 
acles and prophecy. The occasions for miracles were 
multiplied. They could be introduced naturally where 
manifold and not single results should accrue. In this 
way there was no need to manufacture opportunities 
for miraculous interposition. Abundant occasions arose 
to demand them, when consequently they had a most 
thrilling effect. We may see this in the scenes of the 
Exodus, the conquest of Canaan, the rescue of Hezekiah 
and his people. 

So also of prophecy. It asks for time. On the sup- 
position that the fulfillment is to appear in the Scrip- 
tures, an interval of some duration must come between 
the utterance and the fulfillment. It was also wise 
that prophecy should subserve the superadded purpose 
of spiritual comfort to God's people during the ages 
between comparative darkness and forth-breaking light. 
In fact it gave to God's people the first single beams of 
morning twilight, bearing the grateful assurance that 
the Sun of Righteousness would surely rise on the 
nations in the fullness of gospel times. 

(4.) Still again; by this method of making up in- 
spired history it is placed side by side with profane 
history and the most ancient monuments of the race, 



4 INTRODUCTION. 

and thus invites investigation on the point of its truth- 
fulness. Is this progressive history of God's ways 
toward men confirmed by whatever reliable history of 
the same period has come down to us through other 
sources? This point well deserves and richly rewards 
a careful examination. 

(5.) Moreover, it is to be presumed that God would 
commence his revelation of himself to our race in the 
very infancy of their existence. The Bible shows us 
that he did. Assuming that at this point they had 
every thing to learn, we ought to expect that their first 
Bible lessons would turn their thought to the great 
truths of natural religion— the manifestations of God in 
his works of creation and providence. In harmony with 
this reasonable expectation, we read — "In the begin- 
ning God created the heavens and the earth." In that 
opening chapter of revelation, God said, "Let there be 
light," and it was; also "a firmament" abovfc, and it 
was; "Let the dry land appear," and it appeared; "let 
there be light-bearers in the heavens," and they shine 
forth ; let grass and herbs grow ; let creatures live in 
the waters, in the air, and on the dry land, and it was 
so; and finally, "let us make man" far unlike all the 
rest— " in our own image and likeness" — and god-like 
man sprang into being. So onward the narrative wit- 
nesses to the ever-present hand of God in the mists, the 
rains, and the teeming vegetation of the new-made 
world. God, the great Author of nature; God in 
nature and evermore over all nature, was the first les- 
son recorded in God's revelation of himself to men. 

In natural order, the next lesson like this, is God in 
providence — God administering the agencies of earthly 
good or ill, making his presence manifest among his 
intelligent and moral offspring, and even "coming 
down to see" (as the early record has it) what men 
were doing and whether the cry coming up to him told 



INTRODUCTION. 5 

truthfully of the guilty violence perpetrated by man 
upon his fellows. This idea — God ruling over the race 
in righteous retribution for their good or evil deeds — 
was obviously one of the first great moral lessons to be 
illustrated, enforced, impressed. So vital is this con- 
viction to the ends of a moral government that it 
should not surprise us if the actual administration of 
present rewards and punishments in the common 
course of human life in this world should be made far 
more prominent and palpable in the early than in the 
later ages of the race, so much so as to force itself upon 
the dullest eyes and compel the attention of the most 

stupid and reluctant observers. Such (we shall have 

occasion to notice) was unquestionably the divine 
policy throughout the earlier stages of human history, 
abundantly apparent in the records of the Bible. In 
later times, the exigencies of a system of probation, and 
especially the importance of giving large scope to faith, 
after sufficient evidence has been afforded, served to 
impose narrower limits upon present retribution, re- 
serving the larger share to the perfect adjustments of 
the great future. In the earlier stages of human his- 
tory, it would obviously be vital to give men sufficient 
demonstration that God does rule, and therefore is to be 
believed when he threatens to punish either here or 
hereafter, and consequently is evermore to be feared as 
the certain avenger of crime. Hence the imperative 
need in those early ages of such manifestations of God's 
justice as would impress the fear of his name. With 
our eye open to the native pride of depraved souls and 
to their appalling tendency to disown God and bid him 
" depart" and not trouble them with his "ways," it will 
not surprise us that God should shape his earliest 
agencies of providence to inspire fear rather than love. 
It needs but the least thought to see that this policy 
was a simple necessity — the most obvious dictate of 



6 INTRODUCTION. 

wisdom. In this point revelation might naturally be 
progressive, advancing as soon as was safe and wise from 
manifestations inspiring fear to those which would re- 
veal his love. 

The doctrine of divine providence in regard to the 
sufferings of good men — one of the hardest problems of 
human life — might be expected to unfold itself gradu- 
ally. It would be quite too much for the infancy of 
human thought and knowledge to grasp this problem 
and master all its intricacies. Hence the scope for a 
gradual unfolding (as we may see) all the way from the 
discussions in Job and the Psalms to the clearer light 
which shines in the epistle to the Hebrews, as also in 
Peter and Paul. This beautiful illustration of progress 
in divine revelation will well reward attention in its 
place. 

(6.) On the supposition that God's scheme for the 
recovery of our lost race contemplated some atonement 
for sin — a provision in its very nature and relations 
toward both God and man exceedingly delicate and 
critical — it is at least presumable beforehand that God 
would bring out this idea with great care — with the 
w r isest precaution against misconception, and not im- 
probably with some foregoing illustrations of its signifi- 
cance and of its intended application. Precisely this 
we see in the great sacrificial system of the Mosaic 
economy. We only put essentially the same idea into 
other and more general terms when we say that a pro- 
tracted course of successive revelations provides for 
making an antecedent economy pave the way for a sub- 
sequent one — a first revelation preparatory to a second — 
one set of ideas imprinted and impressed upon the 
human mind, made conducive to other and higher rev- 
elations yet to follow. The wisdom of such pro- 
gressions can not fail to impress itself upon all 
thoughtful minds. Thus God's revelations of him- 



INTRODUCTION. 1 

self from age to age were adjusted to the advance in 
spiritual development which he had provided for in 
the human mind. As training and culture developed 
higher capacities, new lessons were in order and higher 
attainments were made. "Whoso is wise and will 
observe these things, even they shall understand"' the 
loving-kindness and matchless wisdom of the Lord. 

To forestall misapprehensions (possible and some- 
times actual), let it be noted that progress in the re- 
vealed science of God by no means supersedes what has 
gone before. Naturally it only serves to place old 
truths in new and richer ligh/. No one fact affirmed 
concerning God in the earlier ages is denied in the 
later. Certain features of his character may be brought 
out more prominently in the later lessons, but there is 
no unsaying of the things said before. Nothing can 
conflict with this axiom of divine science — "1 am the 
Lord; I change not.'' Prominence may be given in the 
early ages to such manifestations as impress men with 
fear and as set forth God's righteous justice toward 
transgressors; while later revelations may disclose 
more fully the depths of divine love and compassion. 
Yet let none infer that God is less just in the New 
Testament than in the Old, or that the earlier policy 
of God's throne has been modified to a larger leniency 
toward persistent criminals. The men who flippantly 
talk of throwing aside the older revelation "as they do 
an old almanac'" mistake most egregiously. God has 
written nothing to be thrown aside. The oldest records 
still give us lessons of God shining with unfading fresh- 
ness and undimmed glory. The statutes binding on 
Israel in the wilderness and in Canaan may not be in 
the same sense binding on our age, but they have not 
for this reason become valueless. They made revela- 
tions of God then, truthful and rich : they make revela- 
tions of God still which it were but small indication of 
wisdom or good sense to ignore. 



CHAPTER I. 



CEEATION. 



Fitly the written word of God to the race begins 
with the creation. In every reflecting mind the first in- 
quiry must be this: Whence am I? Whence came my 
being — this wonderful existence; these active powers? 
It must be that I am indebted for all these gifts to 
some higher Being; how earnestly then do I ask — To 

whom? No other question can claim priority to this. 

Every thing in its nature and relations gives it pre- 
cedence above all other questions. Inasmuch as my 
reason affirms to me that I owe my existence, to some 
great Maker, I feel that I must know Him and must 
know my responsibilities to Him. I need to learn also 
how the further question— my future destiny— may 
link itself with my relations to Him who brought me 
into being. 

Of secondary yet similar interest are the correspond- 
ing questions as to the world we live in. Who made 
it? Does its Maker hold it under his own control? 
Does He still operate its forces and wield its agencies? 
Have I any obligations and duties toward Him who 
made the earth and all that is therein ? Verily I must 
assume that if there be a God, at once Creator and Up- 
holder of the earth and Father of his rational offspring, 
his written word will hasten to throw light on the oth- 
erwise dark minds of his children — will let them know 
that " in the beginning God made the heavens and the 
earth " and man. 

The moral lessons of this great fact — God our Creator — 
are forcibly brought out in later scriptures. Listen to 

the Psalmist : " come, let us sing unto the Lord 

for he is a great God and a great King above all gods. 
In his hands are the deep places of the earth; the 
strength of the hills is his also. The sea is his and he 
made it, and his hands formed the dry land. come, 



10 CREATION. 

let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the 
Lord our Maker, for he is our God and we are the people 
of his pasture and the sheep of his hand." (Ps. 95: 
1-7.) Note also the blended sublimity and beauty of 
David's appeal : " Praise the Lord ; sing unto him a new 
song, for the earth is full of the goodness of the Lord. 
By the word of the Lord were the heavens made and all 
the host of them by the breath of his mouth. He gath- 
ereth the waters of the sea together as an heap; he 
layeth up the depth in store-houses. Let all the earth 
fear the Lord ; let the inhabitants of the world stand in 
awe of him, for he spake and it was: he commanded, 
and it stood fast." (Ps.^ 33 : 1-9.) Still higher if pos- 
sible rises the lofty strain of Isaiah when he would set 
forth the unequalled power of the great Creator as the 
Refuge and Salvation of his trustful children: — "Who 
hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand 
and meted out heaven with a span, and comprehended 
the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the 
mountains in scales and the hills in a balance? To 
whom then will ye liken God"? etc. (Isa. 40: 12, 

18). So when Job had indulged himself too far in 

questioning the ways of God in providence, the Lord 
replied out of the whirlwind, demanding of him — 
"Where wert thou when I laid the foundations of the 
earth ? Declare if thou hast understanding. Who hath 
laid the measures thereof if thou knowest— who hath 
stretched the line upon it? Whereupon were the 
foundations thereof fastened, or who laid the corner- 
stone thereof when the morning stars sang together 

and all the sons of God shouted for joy"? "Canst 

thou lift up thy voice to the clouds that abundance of 
waters may cover thee? Canst thou send lightnings 
that they may go and say unto thee, Here are we"? 
(Job 38: 4-7, 34, 35.^ 

In that great conflict of ages against idolatry, the one 
final appeal was wont to be made to this great fact of 
God's Creatorship. We have examples in Ps. 115 : 2-8 

and Jer 10: 1-16 and elsewhere. Thus throughout 

the sacred word this great fact that God is our Creator, 
involving the whole sphere of God in nature, stands as 
the first witness to his true divinity, the first proof that 
in him we live and have our being — the ground of the 



ITS MORAL LESSONS. 11 

first claim upon us for supreme homage, worship, trust, 
love and obedience. The first lessons taught in Eden 
were taken from this great and open volume of natural 
religion. The first lessons which God's people were to 
place before the heathen in their mission work of the 
early ages were drawn from the visible worlds and from 
their testimony to the Great Creator. These manifesta- 
tions are the alphabet of God; the point therefore from 
which progressive revelations begin. 

Noticeably the record of the creation (Gen. 1 and 2) 
rests not with simply giving the general statement 
that God made all things, but enters somewhat into the 
particulars, reciting in certain points the steps of the proc- 
ess and the order of its details. First the heavens and the 
earth had a beginning and this beginning was from 
God. At some stage in the process, perhaps the next 
in order after the heavens and the earth could be said 
to be, the earth was chaotic, i. e. formless and desolate ; 
then God brought forth light ; then to clear the atmos- 
phere somewhat of mists and vapors, he caused some of 
its waters to rise into the expanse, and some to descend 
to the earth below ; then gathered the waters below into 
seas, leaving portions of the earth's surface dry land. 
Then he brought forth grass and herbage ; next, the 
light-bearers in the heavens appeared — the sun, moon 
and stars; then came into being fish, reptiles and fowl; 
and on the sixth day land animals and man. Thus in 
six successive periods of time, through steps of grada- 
tion easily traced by the witnessing ''sons of God n (Job 
38 : 7), the processes of this creative work were finished. 
The Great Father would have his first-born unfallen 
" sons " as well as his later-born and redeemed children 
enjoy these works of his creative hand, and therefore he 
developed them slowly and in the order of naturally 
successive steps that they might see that all was truly 
u good,'' " very good." 

Partly because of advances made within recent times 
in physical science, partly because of speculations not 
always friendly in tone to the inspired record, and 
partly because of the intrinsic interest and importance 
of the subject, some special points in this narrative de- 
mand very particular attention. 



12 CREATION : OF THE RECORD AND ITS REVELATION. 

1. The origin of the written record and tJie manner of its 
revelation to men. 

The entire book of Genesis is ascribed to Moses on 
most valid grounds; whether as compiler only or as 

original author, is, therefore, the first question. 1 do 

not see how this point can be determined with absolute 
certainty. The probabilities in my view favor the sup- 
position of previously written documents, these proba- 
bilities arising, not to any considerable extent from 
manifest differences of style in its various portions, and 
not at all from diversities in the use of the names of 
God, Jehovah and Elohim ; but mainly from the strong 
presumption that such genealogical records as abound 
in Genesis, coupled so largely with numbers, would be 
put in writing before the age of Moses. Men who had 
the knowledge of writing would certainly appreciate its 

utility for the preservation of such facts as these. 

And further ; the very use of the word " generations " * 
(Gen. 2 : 4) in the sense of history, and much more still 
the statement (Gen. 5 : 1), " This is the booh of the gen- 
erations of Adam," raise this presumption nearly or 

quite to a certainty. In making up the historical 

portions of the Scriptures it seems rational to assume 
that the Lord moved "holy men of old" to put in 
writing such facts falling under their personal observa- 
tion and immediate knowledge as he deemed useful for 
these sacred records. In some cases the writer might 
be (as was Luke) just one remove from the original eye- 
witnesses, yet in a position to learn the facts with 
" perfect understanding " and " certainty." We should 
not doubt the power of God to give to holy men these 
historic facts by immediate revelation ; but the question 
is not one of power, but of wisdom, of divine policy, and 
of fact. The divine policy seems to have been (in this 
case as in miracles) never to introduce the supernat- 
ural, the miraculous, to do what the natural might ac- 
complish equally well. On this principle inspired men 
were moved of God to use their own eyes and minds in 
writing Scripture history in all cases when the facts 
came within their certain knowledge. There were 
facts, like these of the creation, which fell under no hu- 
man eye, and which therefore do not come under this 



CREATION : OF THE RECORD AND ITS REVELATION. 13 

principle. Some form of direct revelation from God is, 
therefore, to be assumed here. Though the supposition 
of a revealing angel might find some support from sub- 
sequent prophetic Scriptures, yet a direct revelation 
from God to some inspired writer is the more obvious 
supposition. — —It has been asked — "Was this creation 
in its processes and announcements shown in a manner 
analogous to prophetic vision — the writer then record- 
ing in his own phrase what he saw and heard? 

There being no testimony on this point from either of 
the two parties — the divine Revealer or the human 
writer — we must leave it undecided. Fortunately it is 
of no particular importance to us. — —It is, however, of 
some importance that we consider the question whether 
in this account of the creation we are to look for state- 
ments adjusted to science — not merely to the stage of its 
progress in this present year of the nineteeth century, 
but to the perfect science of ultimate fact; or, on the 
other hand, for statements adapted to the average mind 
of Hebrew readers in the age of Moses, written for their 
comprehension, instruction and spiritual culture. I 
answer unhesitatingly, the latter. "All Scripture, given 

by inspiration of God, is profitable for doctrine 

and for instruction in righteousness" (2 Tim. 3: 16), 

and was of God designed and shaped for these ends. 

Yet let it be borne in mind; these statements respect- 
ing the processes of creation, being in the sense in- 
tended, actually true, will not conflict with any true 
science. They may omit processes which human analy- 
sis and research may render probable, passing them as 
not germain to the scope of a moral revelation and as 
not likely to be intelligible to the masses of man- 
kind. Finally — that the assumed stand-point of view 

from which these processes of creation are contemplated 
is on this earth and not elsewhere in the universe is 
certain from the fact that it was written to be read and 
understood by men and not by angels. Hence we must 
expect the facts to be presented as they would hare ap- 
peared to a supposed observer upon our globe. 

2. What is the true idea of 'nature, and ichat the line 
between nature and the supernatural f 

A reference to familiar facts will best set forth the 
case. Thus; it is in and by nature that at a certain 
temperature water becomes vapor; at another tempera- 



14 creation: nature and the supernatural. 

ture, ice; that vapor rises in the atmosphere, water 
runs downward, and ice abides under the laws of solids. 
On the other hand it is not in nature that water in any 
of its forms creates itself. Its elements can not begin 

to be, save by some power above nature. Again, by 

nature plants and animals reproduce their kind, but 
never can of themselves begin their own existence. 
Hence some of the processes brought before us in this 
record of creation come under the head of nature; 
others are as obviously supernatural — from the imme- 
diate hand of God. The work of the second day — the 
mists of the atmosphere, in part ascending in vapor, in 
part precipitated upon the earth in water — seems to 
have followed natural law. In the work of the third, 
the waters on higher portions of the earth's surface 
subsiding into the seas, follow the law of flowing 
water. But the original creation of matter and the 
beginnings of life, both vegetable and animal, must 
have been supernatural — from the immediate fiat of 
the Almighty. 

This point would scarcely need special definition 
had not extreme views been put forth in our times; as 
(e. g.) that nature is virtually a second-rate deity — 
indebted to God, indeed, for the original gift of its 
powers, but thenceforward working those powers inde- 
pendently of God — made to run without God after he 
has once wound it up as the mechanic makes and winds 
up his watch. But the Scriptures recognize no such 
semi-deification of nature. According to their teach- 
ing, God still "upholds all things by the word of his 
power" (Heb. 1: 3); "By him all things consist" 
(Col. 1 : 17) — i. e.j are maintained in their existence — 
are held to system and order under natural law. It is 
precisely God himself who gives or withholds the rain ; 
who calls to the lightnings and they answer, "Here 
we are" — (Job 38 : 35) ; and it is none the less God who 
wields these agencies because he does it in harmony 
with principles which are just as fixed as he pleases to 
have them. Therefore true science will take no excep- 
tion to the doctrine that nature is nothing more or less 
than God's established mode of operation. We may call 
these modes of operations "laws" or "powers," and may 
think and speak of them as constituting "Nature ;" but 
if we come to regard Nature as a maker and a doer, 



creation: on the origin of life. 15 

working independently of God, we have (inadvertently 
perhaps, but none the less really) ruled God out of his 
own universe. Both Scripture and reason hold that 
" in him we live and move and have our being." (Acts 
17: 28.) The broad fact that God's intelligent creat- 
ures must live in this material world and be constantly 
acting upon matter and acted upon by matter, sug- 
gests abundant reasons why God should ordain fixed 
laws for the changes and states of all material things. 
But why should we think of God's hand as any the 
less present in all these changes of material states and 
forms because they follow fixed and ascertainable laws ? 
In truth the divine wisdom is only the more abun- 
dantly manifested by means of this reliable uniformity. 

Another doctrine yet more extreme severs all con- 
nection between nature and an intelligent Power above 
and over her, and thus makes her supreme in her 
domain. This is so far Atheism — ruling God out from 

at least the entire material universe. Yet, again; 

to make nature herself intelligent — to ascribe to nature 
whatever traces of design appear in her operations, 
and to hold that nature is herself the universe, undis- 
tinguishable from any higher spiritual power, is Pan- 
theism. It is therefore important to define nature 

so that her true relations to the Supreme Intelligence — 
the very God — Creator and Lord of the universe — shall 
be distinctly seen and reverently recognized. 

The advocates of extreme naturalism have labored 
faithfully to verify their doctrine by experiment. 
They have put Nature to task — not to say torture — to 
compel her to originate life. Pushing their chemical 
analysis of those forms of matter in which life is 
thought specially to reside, they flatter themselves that 
they have at last got their hands on the very elements 
which, brought together, make life, viz, carbonic acid, 
ammonia, and water, chemically combined. To this 
compound they give the name, "protoplasm." They 
have found, they say, that where life is there is proto- 
plasm, its home and dwelling-place at least ; and that 
life never appears lodging in any other home. They 
can not see that the presence of life adds any thing to 
this compound, or that its absence takes any thing 
away. Therefore they are sure they have found what 
makes life. 

2 



16 

Now the skillful chemist in his laboratory has not 
the least difficulty in providing himself with carbonic 
acid, ammonia, and water. Why then does he not 
evolve the long-sought-for life-force and prove his doc- 
trine, past all doubt ? Let him bring out new beings, 
new forms of life, vegetable or animal or both, in am- 
ple diversity, for the range is unlimited. Let his lab- 
oratory push forth into being such troops of offspring 
as will forever confound gainsayers and prove that 
Nature, properly manipulated, is equal to the produc- 
tion of life-forces in endless variety and abundance. 

Have any modern scientists done this? Not yet. 
Have they made any approximation toward it ? Mr. 
Huxley thinks he has come so near to it that if he 
could only have at his service the favorable conditions 
of the very earliest state of matter, he should succeed. 
"If it were given me (says he) to look beyond the 
abyss of geologically-recorded time to the still more 
remote period when the earth was passing through 
physical and chemical conditions which it can no more 
see again than a man can recall his infancy, I should 
expect to be a witness of the evolution of living protoplasm from 
not living matter. That is the expectation to which ana- 
logical reasoning leads me." * "Not living matter 

evolving living protoplasm " means that matter itself, 
dead matter, begets real life. Nature would thus be- 
come herself a creator, exercising the most decisive 
functions of the Infinite God. Mr. Huxley can not 
make Nature do this exploit in the present state of this 
world or of the universe ; but he fully believes there 
was a time when he should have seen it if he had been 
there 1 This is his proof of the new doctrine. He will 
not presume to " call it any thing but an act of philo- 
sophic faith." 

3. The sense of the ivord "day" as used in Gen. I. of the 
six days of creation. 

To simplify the subject I make the single issue — Is 
it a period of twenty-four hours, or a period of special 
character, indefinitely long? The latter theory sup- 
poses the word to refer here not so much to duration as 
to special character — the sort of work done and the 
changes produced during the period contemplated. 

* Lay sermons on spontaneous generation ; pp. 364-366. 



creation: on the word "day." 17 

Turning our attention to this latter theory, we raise 
three leading inquiries : 

(1.) Do the laws of language and, specially, does the 
usage of the word "day" permit it? 

(2.) Apart from the bearing of geological facts, are 
there points in the narrative itself which demand or 
even favor this sense of the word? 

(3.) What are the geological facts bearing on this 
question, and what weight may legitimately be accorded 
to them ? 

(1.) Beyond all question the word "day" is used 
abundantly, (and therefore admits of being used) to 
denote a period of special character, with no particular 
reference to its duration. We have a case in this im- 
mediate connection (Gen. 2 : 4), where it is used of the 
whole creative period : " In the day that the Lord God 
made the earth and the heavens." Under the same 
usage we have " the day of the Lord (1 Thess. 5 : 2) for 
the day of judgment; "the day of God," in the same 
sense (2 Pet. 3 : 12) ; " the day of salvation " (2 Cor. 6 : 
2) ; " day of redemption" (Eph. 4 : 30) ; a " day of dark- 
ness and of gloominess; a day of clouds and of thick 
darkness" (Joel 2: 2). "In the day of prosperity, be 
joyful ; but in the day of adversity, consider " (Eccl. 7 : 
14). " If thou hadst known in this thy day the things," 
etc. (Luke 19: 42). So also Job 19: 2o,and John 8: 56, 
etc. 

To set aside this testimony from usage as being in- 
applicable to the present case, it has been said — 
(a.) That here is a succession of days, "first day," "second 
day," " third day," etc., and that this requires the usual 

sense of days of the week. To which the answer is 

that here are six special periods succeeding each other — 
a sufficient reason for using the word in the peculiar 
sense of a period of special character. Each of these 
periods is distinct from any and all the rest in the 

character of the work wrought in it. The reason for 

dividing the creative work into six periods — " days " — 
rather than into more or fewer lies in the divine wisdom 
as to the best proportion of days of man's labor to the 
one day of his rest, the Sabbath. God's plan for his 
creative work contemplated his own example as sug- 
gestive of man's Sabbath and was shaped accordingly. 
This accounts for dividing the work of creation into six 



18 creation: on the word "day." 

special periods, correlated to God's day of rest from cre- 
ative work. (b.) It will also be urged that each of 

these days is said to be made up of evening and of 
morning — "The evening and the morning were the 
first day," etc. But the strength of this objection comes 
mainly from mistranslation and consequent miscon- 
ception of the original. The precise thought is not 
that evening and morning composed or made up one 
full day ; but rather this : There was evening and there 
was morning — day one, i. e., day number one. There 
was darkness and then there was light, indicating one 
of the great creative periods.* 

It is one thing to say — There were alternations of 
evening and morning — L e. dark scenes and bright 
scenes — marking the successive periods of creation, first, 
second, third, etc.; and another thing to affirm that each 
of these evenings and mornings made up a day. The 
point specially affirmed in the two cases, though some- 
what analogous, is not by any means identical. Let it 

be considered moreover, that while in Hebrew as in Eng- 
lish, night and day are often used for the average twelve- 
hour duration of darkness and of light respectively in each 
twenty-four hours, yet in neither language are the words 
evening and morning used in this sense, as synonymous 
with night and day. Indeed " evening " and " morn- 
ing" are rather points than periods of time; cer- 
tainly do not indicate any definite amount of time — any 
precise number of hours; but are used to denote the 
two great changes — i. e. from light to darkness and from 
darkness to light ; in other words, from day to night 
and from night to day. Therefore to make evening and 
morning added together constitute one day is entirely 
without warrant in either Hebrew or English usage and 
can not be the meaning of these passages in Gene- 
sis.f 

(2.) The showing of the narrative itself, considered apart 
from the bearing of geological facts. 

(a.) Here vs. 3-5 demand special attention, this first 

* Dr. A. M'Caul in "Aids to Faith," page 241 renders it— "And 
evening happened and morning happened — one -day." Precisely this 
is the sense of the Septuagint and of the Syriac. See also Tayler 
Lewis in Lange's Genesis, pp. 132, 133. 

t See the usage in David (Ps. 55 : 17), " Evening and morning 
and at noon will I pray." 



CREATION : OX THE WORD " DAY."' 19 

day being the model one. 1 understand " evening'' 

to be the chaotic state of v. 2, when "darkness was on 
the face of the deep/'' and "morning" to be that first 
"light" which God spake into being. The reason for 
using these words — ''evening and morning"' — in this 
sense I find in the universal sentiment of mankind that 
light is pleasant and darkness is not. This sentiment 
is indicated here: " God saw the light that it was 
good/' The state of chaos was in contrast with this — 
dismal, dreary, awakening no sense of beauty or order ; 
no emotions of joy. The light of day brings joy, and 
the freshest and best sensation of it comes with the 
morning. Hence these words were fitly and beautifully 
appropriate to the two great creative states — first chaos; 
secondly, light — which together marked off the first of 

the six creative days. But we can not for a moment 

think of this chaotic state as being only twelve hours. 
"We can not rationally think of the word ;i evening " ap- 
plied to it as having any reference to time, duration. 
It was an evening only in the sense of being dark, des- 
olate, any thing but joyous like the morning. The 
word " evening " may be chosen rather than night 
for the sake of a more perfect antithesis with '•'morning.*' 

(b.) Throughout at least the first three of these crea- 
tive epochs there was no sun-rising and setting to mark 
off the ordinary day. These therefore were not the 
common human day: but, as Augustine long ago said, 
these are the days of God — divine days — measuring off 
his great creative periods. God moved through these 
six great periods by successive stages of labor and of 
rest. Beginning with the long evening of chaos; then 
advancing to a glorious day of light ; then, after a ces- 
sation analogous to man's rest by night, he proceeded 
to the work of the second day — the joyous and beautiful 
development of the firmament in the heavens. So on- 
ward by stages of repose and of activity, these figura- 
tive evenings and mornings continued through the six 
successive epochs of creation. 

(c.) In some at least of these creative epochs, the 
work done demands more time than twenty-four hours. 
For example, the gathering of the waters from under 
the heavens into one place to constitute the seas or 
oceans and leave portions of the earth's surface dry land. 
Nothing short of absolute miracle could effect this in 



20 

one human day. But miracle should not be assumed 
here, the rule of reason and the normal law of God's 
operations being never to work a miracle in a case where 
the ordinary course of nature will accomplish the same 
results equally well. We must the more surely exclude 
miracle and assume the action of natural law only 
throughout these processes of the creative work because 
the very purpose of a protracted rather than an instan- 
taneous creation looked manifestly to the enlighten- 
ment, instruction, interest, and joy of those " morning 
stars," the "sons of God" who beheld the scene, then 

" sang together and shouted for joy " (Job 38 : 7). 

The greatness of the work assigned to the fourth day 
stringently forbids our compressing it within the limits 
of one ordinary human day. Especially is this the case 
if we understand the verse to speak of the original 
creation of these light-bearers — the sun and the moon and 
the stars also, and of their adjustment in their spheres 
for their assigned work. Think of the vastness of the 
sun and of the numbers, magnitude, and immense dis- 
tances of the stars ; and ask how it is possible that the 
creation of these bodies could be either instructive or 
joyful to the beholding angels if it had been all rushed 

through within twenty-four hours of human time. 

This difficulty is in a measure relieved if we suppose 
the fourth day's work to have been, not the original cre- 
ation of these heavenly bodies, but only the bringing of 
them into the view of a supposed spectator upon the 
earth — i. e. by clearing the atmosphere so as to make 
these heavenly bodies visible. The question at issue 
between these two constructions of the fourth day's work 
must be examined in its place. The amount of crea- 
tive and other work brought within the sixth day should 
be noticed. First, God created all the land animals ; 
then Adam ; then he brought " every beast of the field 
and every fowl of the air" to Adam to see what he would 
call them — which at least must assume that Adam had 
attained a somewhat full knowledge of language, and 
that he had time enough to study the special character 
of each animal so as to give each one its appropriate 
name, and time enough also to ascertain that there was 
not one among them all adapted to be a " helpmeet " 
for himself. Then the " deep sleep " of Adam — how 
long protracted, the record saith not ; and finally the 



CREATION : ON THE WORD " DAY." 21 

creation of Eve from one of his ribs — all to come within 
the sixth day ; for the creation of Eve certainly falls within 
this day, being a part of the creative work, and accom- 
plished^ therefore, before God's seventh day of rest from all 
his work began. These labors of the sixth day, moreover, 
were precisely such as should not be rushed through in 
haste. The importance, not to say solemnity, of these 
transactions and the special interest they must be sup- 
posed to awaken in the first-born " sons of God " most strin- 
gently preclude precipitate haste. It is not easy to see 
how Moses or his intelligent readers of the early time could 
have supposed all this to have transpired within the 

twelve hours of light in a human day. We may say, 

moreover, in regard to each and all of these six creative 
periods that if the holy angels were indeed spectators 
of these scenes and if God adjusted his methods of cre- 
ation to the capacities of these pupils — these admiring 
students of his glorious works — then surely we must not 
think of his compressing them within the period of six 
human days. Divine days they certainly must have 
been, sufficiently protracted to afford finite minds scope 
for intelligent study, adoring contemplation, and as the 
Bible indicates, most rapturous shouts of joy. 

Against the theory of indefinitely long periods, it is 
objected that the law of the Sabbath demands the usual 
sense of the word " dayP The record in Gen. 2 : 2, 3, is — 
"On the seventh day God ended his work which he 
had made ; and he rested on the seventh day from all 
his work which he had made. And God blessed the 
seventh day and sanctified it, because that in it he had 
rested from all his work which he had created and 
made." The words of the fourth command are — " Six 
days shalt thou labor and do all thy work ; but the sev- 
enth day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God, etc. — for 
in six days the Lord made heaven and earth : where- 
fore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed 
it." The real argument here rests on the analogy be- 
tween God's working and resting, and man's labor and 
rest. In each case the period of labor is six out of 
seven ; of rest, one in seven. This argument does not 
require that God's six working days and one resting 
day should be of twenty-four hours each. If it did, we 
should be hard pressed to show that God's seventh day 
of rest from creation's work was a merely human day 



22 CREATION : ON THE WORD " DAY." 

from sun to sun. No ; it suffices if we make God's days 
of creative energy and of creative rest each and all 
divine days — all alike periods of indefinite length — all 
of the same sort ; and on the other hand man's days of 
labor and his day of rest, all human days, of the same 
sort with each other, from sun to sun. As God's rest- 
ing day is plainly of indefinite length — a period known 
by its character and not by its duration, so should his 
days of creative labor be : not only so may they be, but 
so they ought to be according to the analogy and argu- 
ment in the case. We come therefore to the conclu- 
sion that entirely apart from the demands of geological 
science, the creative days must be periods of indefinite 
length, called "days" with reference to the peculiar 
work done in them and to their peculiar character, and 
not as being the ordinary human day of twenty-four 
hours. It may be admitted, moreover, that the phrase- 
ology and the whole shaping of the narrative in respect 
to days may have contemplated the institution of the 
Sabbath — to be founded as shown above upon the anal- 
ogy of God's labor and rest with man's permitted labor 
and enjoined rest in commemoration of God's work of 
creation. 

(3.) We are to consider the geological facts bearing on 
this point and the weight legitimately due to them. 

If the point last put has been sustained, it will be 
seen at the outset that even should geology make large 
demands for time, far beyond the ordinary human day, 
we shall have no occasion to strain the laws of interpre- 
tation to bring the record into harmony w r ith such de- 
mands. We open this inquiry therefore into the 

facts of geology, not so much to make out if possible a 
harmony between them and Genesis by toning down 
the facts of science or by toning up the inspired record, 
as to show how readily and how beautifully the facts 
just as they are (so far as known) accord with the le- 
gitimate sense of the sacred record. 

Preliminary to the main inquiry before us is the 
question as to the primary original state of matter. 
Was it brought into existence in its primordial ele- 
ments — those molecules which not only defy all human 
effort at analysis, but which seem to be in their nature 

the simplest forms of matter ? Chemistry has shown 

that many of the most familiar substances, long sup- 



creation: on the word "bay." 23 

posed to be simple, are really compound. Were they 
brought into existence in the state in which we com- 
monly see them, or in their ultimate, most simple ele- 
ments? For example, did God originally create water, 
or the two gases (hydrogen and oxygen) of which it is 
composed, which were subsequently combined chem- 
ically into water? On this point the Scriptures are 

silent. If Science has any thing to reveal about it, the 
field is open to her and she may proceed, nothing in the 
sacred Scriptures dissenting or restricting. If she suc- 
ceeds in proving or half proving that the first state of 
matter was nebulous — a " fire-mist" — gaseous in form, 
very well. I do not see that the record of Moses con- 
tests this theory. It passes this point with no dog- 
matic statements whatever, not even a fact which 
necessarily implies either the affirmative or the nega- 
tive. The record in Genesis does assume that at the 
point where the second day's work begins, the atmos- 
phere was heavily charged with vapor, and that a part 
of this was precipitated upon the earth in water and a 
part borne upward into the higher strata of the atmos- 
phere. The third day's work gathered the waters then 
upon the earth's surface into the ocean beds and left 
portions of the land dry. Consequently the state of the 
atmosphere, and in general the condition of the waters 
of our globe were not arranged at first just as we have 
them now. So much we are told. 

There are yet other preliminary questions. 

On the shores of lakes, seas, oceans, we find pebbles 
rounded and smooth, mineralogically of the same ele- 
ments which are found in rock formations. Were they 
created in this rounded and worn state, or were they 
once portions of these rock strata, but subsequently 
broken up by natural agencies and worn by the action 
of flowing water ? 

Another case. Coal beds often contain what seem to 
be whole trees and huge vegetables (ferns, etc.) ap- 
parently charred and converted into coal. Were they 
created just as we find them, or were they indeed trees 
and vegetables before they became coal? Yet an- 
other case. The rocks nearest the surface contain al- 
most universally more or less of what seem like fos- 
silized plants and animals. They have the form of the 
plant or animal in wonderful perfection. Were these 



24 CREATION : ON THE WORD " DAY." 

fossiliferous rocks, containing apparent fossils, created 
as we see them, or were these fossils once real plants 

and animals ? 1 see no reason whatever to hesitate 

over these questions. We can not suppose that God 
created these worn and rounded pebbles, these charred 
trees and ferns, these prints of animal footsteps — these 
facsimiles of his creative work in the vegetable and an- 
imal kingdom, for the sake of puzzling or misleading, 
or, in plainest words, deceiving his intelligent off- 
spring. He never could have meant to baffle all scien- 
tific inquiry into his works of creation. Rather we 
must assume that he lays his works open to such in- 
quiries, and invites men to study and learn his ways. 
If this be admitted, it follows that these stratified and 
fossil-bearing rocks open to us a great volume of Pre- 
Adamic history of our globe, revealing its processes of 
rock -formation ; to some extent its climatic and various 
conditions for the support of life, vegetable and animal, 
and for its successive populations of plants and an- 
imals. 

Grouping comprehensively some geological facts bear- 
ing on the duration of the great creative periods, I 
note (1.) Vast strata of rock-formations, widely diverse 
from each other, too diverse to have been formed under 
the same circumstances and conditions of our globe. 
Some — the lowest in relative position — appear to have 
been once in a state of fusion under intense heat, 
while others — in general all the higher rocks — seem to 
have been deposited under water. Mineralogically, 
these rocks differ from each other very widely and also 

from the fused rocks. (2.) Again, some are manifestly 

composed of fragments of pre-existing rocks, broken off 
and worn by long-continued attrition and then com- 
pacted — known as pudding-stone — the breccias. 

(3.) Yet again; immense strata of these intermediate 
and higher rocks contain fossil organic remains, some 
of vegetables, others of animals or of both, and also in 
very great variety. More marvelous still; they are 
found occurring in groups, bearing a well defined rela- 
tion to each other, so that one strata of rock contain:? 
species of vegetables and also of animals in a measure 
adapted to each other, and adjusted to the condition of 
the earth's surface and climate at one and the same 
time. Another strata shall contain a different group, 



creation: ox the word "day." 25 

to some extent new and yet not altogether so, but lap- 
ping on with some of the earth's old inhabitants repro- 
duced, and omitting other species. (4.) Again, im- 
mense beds of coal are found, undoubtedly of vegetable 
origin, differing somewhat widely from each other as 
having been formed from diverse vegetable and forest 
material, and under various degrees of heat and press- 
ure. No small amount of time must be given for the 
growth and deposition of these mountain piles of tree 

and fern. The charring of these coal-pits of nature 

was provided for in the " fervent heat " of the earth just 
below the surface, coupled with pressure brought upon 
them it would seem by convulsions and upbreakings, to 
which the earth's crust has been many times sub- 
jected. (5.) Limestone, largely of animal origin, de- 
mands in like manner time for the growth of the ani- 
mals whose shelly incasements, accumulating age 
after age, have made such ample provision of limestone 
and of lime for the use of man. 

This list of nature's facts as the practiced eye reads 
them from the crust of our earth does not claim to be 
exhaustive. If it were all, however, it would still be 
amply sufficient to sustain the demand for long cre- 
ative periods as opposed to ordinary human days. It 
should not be forgotten that this demand, coming forth 
from the facts developed in the crust of the earth, falls 
in most fully with what we have seen to be the legiti- 
mate construction of the Mosaic record. 

Prominent points of harmony between Genesis and Geology. 

(1.) Creation was a gradual process, spanning from 
beginning to end long periods of time. I use the word 
" creation" to comprehend not only the original produc- 
tion of matter, but its subsequent changes and trans- 
formations till the earth was fully prepared for the 
abode of man. 

(2.) The earth was for a considerable time under water. 
The record of Moses is decisive to this point. The cur- 
rent theory in respect to the formation of most if not 
all the rocky strata of the earth's crust is equally so. 

(3.) There icas light on the earth before the appearance of 
the sun. Genesis dates the light from the first day ; the 

appearance of the sun, from the fourth. The theory 

that the primitive state of created matter was gaseous 
(or nebulous) provides for this, since it is well known 



26 CREATION : GENESIS AND GEOLOGY AT ONE. 

that the chemical combination of the two gases that 
form water (for instance) — a combination produced by- 
electricity, evolves light. But we are not restricted to 
this hypothesis to account for light before the sun was 
visible. The state of the atmosphere may furnish all 
the causes needed. See below, page 32. 

(4.) Vegetables were created before animals. So Moses, 
for he locates the former on the third day ; the latter 
on the fifth and sixth. This is of course the order of 
nature since the animals are to subsist on vegetables. 
Geology finds vegetables in fossil state below the ear- 
liest animals. 

(5.) Among the animal tribes, those of the water are 
before those of the land. Genesis gives us fish and rep- 
tiles and even fowl before the mammals — land ani- 
mals — the former on the fifth day; the latter with man 
on the sixth. Geology indorses this order, showing 
that fish and reptiles lie in rocks lower and older than 
quadrupeds. 

(6.) Man is last of all. The testimony of the rocks 
is here at one with that of Grenesis — other animals and 
the vegetables also, long ages before man. 

Now how has it happened that this record, coming 
to us through Moses, harmonizes so wonderfully with 
the main results of a science yet in its infancy — almost 
utterly unknown until the present century ? Is it due 
to the scientific attainments of Moses? Is it not 
rather due to inspiration — "holy men of old" — Moses 
himself or the fathers before him — being taught by 
the same Being who "in the beginning created the 
heavens and the earth ? " The marvel is that this rec- 
ord should be so constructed as to present a very intel- 
ligible view of the processes of the six days' work to the 
average mind of the race before geological science was 
born, and yet when this science begins to develop the 
constitution and composition of the earth's surface, the 
inspired record is found to harmonize w T ith these devel- 
opments in all important features. So it is wont to 
happen. Truth rejoices in the light. A truthful Bible 
and all true science meet in loving communion, evin- 
cing their common parentage — offspring of the same 
Infinite Father. 

4. " In the beginning God created the heavens and 
the earth." Was this the original production of matter ; 



CREATION: SENSE OF "CREATE 53 IN GEN. 1:1. 27 

or was it only the modification of pre-existent matter 
into new forms ? (1.) That this was the original pro- 
duction of matter is probable a priori because it is trite, 
and because it is a truth very important to affirm in 
this first revelation. Matter is not eternal and self- 
existent. Those who intelligently believe in one 
Supreme God — an Infinite, Intelligent Spirit, will 
need no words w T asted to disprove the assumption that 
matter existed from eternity, the Author of itself ; for this 
assumption ascribes to matter the distinctive qualities 

of God himself. It is moreover important that God 

should declare himself to be th.e author of all existing 
matter in the universe. This is one of his great and 
distinctive works — one which human speculation has 
been prone to deny him, and w T hich therefore it is of 
the utmost consequence that he should affirm. (2.) The 
passage (Ps. 90 : 2) ascribed to Moses, expressly declares 
that God existed " before the mountains. 77 " Before the 
mountains were brought forth, even from everlasting 
to everlasting thou art God." Moses did not think 
matter to be eternal. He knew and taught that God 
existed from eternity and that matter did not. The 
obvious sense of his words is that God " brought forth " 
(i, e. into existence) the mountains of this earthly 
globe. 

(3.) The writer to the Hebrews affirms that this doc- 
trine — God the original Creator of matter — is accepted 
by faith, i. e. upon the credit of God's own testimony. 
" By faith we understand that the worlds were framed 
by the word of God so that things which are seen were 
not made of things that do appear 77 (Heb. 11 : 3). Not 
being constructed out of matter previously apparent, 
they must have been made by the direct production of 
matter not before existing. 

(4.) This is the natural and obvious sense of the 
words and this the place to affirm this first fact in the 
work of creation. This is the point to start with. 
How came the matter of the universe into being at all? 
Whence came this material substance composing the 
heavens and the earth ? In the beginning God created 
it. It may be said truthfully that if God had pur- 
posed to reveal himself as the Author of matter — the 
real Maker of it all — he could have found no words 
more fitted to his purpose than these. Hence to deny 



28 CREATION : SENSE OF " CREATE " IN GEN, 1 : 1. 

that this is their sense is the next thing to denying to 
God the right or the power to reveal this fact at all. 

(5.) It is objected that the primary sense of the word 
bara * (used here) is not to bring into existence what 
had no existence before, but " to cut, to cut out, to carve " 
(Gesenius) ; " to cut, form, fashion " (Fuerst). But this 
objection, though plausible to a merely superficial view, 
is really of very little force. Usage, not etymological 
relation, gives law to language. The etymological, pri- 
mary sense of barak, the common Hebrew word for bless, 
is to break ; then to bend as the knee, to kneel and to 
cause one to kneel; and then, perhaps from the custom 
of kneeling to receive the patriarchal benediction, or to 
implore blessings from God, comes the ultimate and by 
far the most common significance — to bless. Usage in 
every case must determine the most common and there- 
fore most probable sense; then the context and the 
known opinions of the writer come in to aid toward 
the true sense in any given instance. 

In the Hebrew verb regard must be had to its form, 
technically called its " conjugation," since the sense of 
the several conjugations from the same root may vary 
widely. In this verb (bara) the sense of Hiphil conju- 
gation is to fatten — which is very remote from the 
sense of " Kal " and of its passive "Niphal." In Piel 
only do we find the etymological sense to cut, to carve 
out (five times only) and these spoken of human opera- 
tions exclusively (Josh. 17: 15, 18 and Ezek. 23: 47 
and 21 : 19). But in Kal and its passive Niphal, we 
find the word used forty-eight times, and always of divine 
operations — always of some form of creative work wrought 
by God himself and never by man.f 

t The following synoptical view of the passages in which n^ 
or KHD3 occurs is given in the Bibliotheca Sacra (Oct. 1856, pp. 
763, 764) by Prof. E. P. Barrows. "It is used, 

I. Of the original creation: 1. Of the world generally, or parts of 
it : Gen. 1 : 1 and 1 : 21 and 2 : 3, 4 and Ps. 89 : 12 and 148 : 5 and 
Isa. 40 : 26 and 40 : 28 and 42 : 5 and 45 : 18 (twice), Amos 4 : 13. 

Also Isa. 45: 7 (twice); making fourteen times in all. 2. Of 

rational man : Gen. 1 : 27 (thrice) and 5 : 1, 2 (twice) and 6 : 7 and 
Deut. 4 : 32 and Isa. 45 : 12 and Eccl. 12 : 1 and Mai. 2 : 10. Here 
also we may conveniently place Ps. 89 : 47 ; twelve times. 

II. Of a subsequent creation : 1. Of the successive generations of 
men, Ps. 102 : 18 and of animal beings, Ps. 104 : 30. 2. Of nation* 



creation: sense of "create" IN GEN. 1:1. 29 

The testimony therefore from usage is entirely con- 
clusive to the point that this word in this form of it was 
specially appropriated to signify God's creative acts — 

the exertion of his creative power. There are two 

other Hebrew words having the sense to make, to form, 
[asah and yatsar], which are sometimes used of God as 
creating but by far most often of man's work in forming 
and molding material things. Now note the argument. 
The Hebrews had these three words for making, out of 
which one only is used exclusively of God — never of 
man — as a maker. Now there is one special sense in 
which God can make and man can not, viz. that of 
bringing into existence what had no existence before. 
Over against this, place the fact that their word "bara" 
is used of God's making forty-eight times and of man's 
making never, and we must conclude that they ex- 
pressed by this word that distinctive power of God 
which man never can even approach — viz. the power 
to give existence to matter, to mind and to life. In passages 
where this sense of " bara " is appropriate, there can be 
no question that it is the real meaning. 

5. The relation of v. 1 to v. 2 and to the rest of the chapter. 

Some have maintained that v. 1 is only a statement 
in general terms of the contents of the chapter, a head- 
ing, stating no particular fact distinct from what fol- 
lows. Others take it to be one fact in the series — the 

first step in the process of the creative work — the suc- 
cessive steps then following in due order. This latter 
construction I accept ; and urge in its support, 

(1.) That this is the most obvious sense of the words. 
The word "And" (v. 2) "And the earth was without 

under the figure of individuals, Ezek. 21 : 35 (Eng. version v. 30) 

and 28 : 13, 15 ; three times in Ezekiel only. 3. Of particular 

men as the instruments of God's purposes ; Isa. 54: 16 (twice). 

4. Of miraculous events ; Ex. 34 : 10 and Num. 16 : 30 and Jer. 31 : 
22. 5. Of events foretold in prophecy ; Isa, 48 : 7. 

III. Of creation in a moral sense : 1. Of a clean heart and holy af- 
fections and actions ; Ps. 51 : 10 and Isa. 45 : 8 and 57 : 19. 2. 

Of Israel as God's covenant people, or of a member of Israel ; Isa. 

43 : 1, 7, 15. 3. Of a new and glorious order of things for Israel 

and in Israel ; Isa. 4 : 5 and 41 : 20 and 65 : 17, 18 (twice). 

An examination of these passages (half of which relate to the 
original creation) will show that in every instance the idea is that 
of bringing into being by divine power. Whether that which is 
created is new matter, or something else that is new, must be deter- 
mined bv the context." 



30 CREATION : RELATION OF V. 1 TO WHAT FOLLOWS. 

form," etc., must be taken as continuing the subject — not 
as commencing it. It should give us another and suc- 
ceeding fact, and not be taken to begin a detailed 
history. 

(2.) This is the natural order of the facts. First, 
matter must be brought into existence. Nothing can 
be done with it, nothing can be said about it, until it is. 
The first verse therefore is the natural beginning of the 
narrative — the first fact to be stated. The second verse 
gives naturally the next fact, viz. the condition of this 
matter immediately prior to the six days' creative work 
upon it. Deferring the little he has to say upon the 
" heavens," he calls our attention to the earth as being 
of chief interest to man, and makes this the main theme 

of the chapter. An observer would have seen the 

earth mantled in darkness, its atmosphere laden with 
murky vapors and dense mists ; the surface (if indeed 
the waters below could be distinguished from the waters 
above) one wide waste of waters, all formless, vast, dis- 
mal ; with nothing of order or beauty on which the eye 
could rest. Above and upon this shapeless mass the 
Spirit of God was hovering, or shall we say incubating, 
for such may be the figure involved in the Hebrew 
verb. Moreover it seems to be implied that this action 
of the creative Spirit was protracted. The Hebrew 
participle (used here) expresses continued action — was 
brooding over, incubating, this wild, waste, desolate 
mass. 

Some scientific men suppose they find in this second 
verse, not water, but the gaseous matter which ulti- 
mately became water and solid earth. This construc- 
tion originates in a theory in regard to the primal form 
in which the matter of our world came from the Crea- 
tor's hand, which theory may or may not be true, but 
if true is too remote from the common mind and too 
foreign from the scope of divine revelation to allow us 
to suppose that God would refer to it in his revelation. 

Carrying out this scientific theory, some have held* 

that not only the " waters" of v. 2 but those of vs. 6, 7, 
were gases, not waters. The fatal objections to this 
theory are — that these " waters" are the same which 
in vs. 9, 10, are " gathered into one place" and " called 
seas;" also that the common people for several thousand 

* See Bib. Sacra, April, 1855, pp. 325, 326. 



CREATION : WORK OF FOURTH DAY. 31 

years could not have understood Moses if he had spoken 
of gases — certainly could not have understood their 

common word for waters to mean gases. It is not 

well to strain and force this simple narrative to speak 
so scientifically as to be unintelligible to those for whom 

it was primarily written. The first state of created 

matter may have been gaseous. The record in Gene- 
sis has said nothing to forbid this. It certainly could 
not come within its province to teach it. Suffice it 
that time enough may be found between verses 1 and 
2 for a portion of this gaseous matter to form water — 
not to say also to form the more solid portions of this 
globe. 

The connection of v. 2 with v. 1 is such that an in- 
definitely long period may have intervened. The first 
verb of v. 2 implies no close connection with v. 1. But 
in v. 3 the form of the first verb — " And then God 
said" — does make a close historical connection with 
v. 2. 

6. The work of the fourth day. Were the light-bear- 
ers (" lights" in the sense of luminaries) in the heav- 
ens, viz. the sun, moon, and stars also, " made," created, 
on this day, or simply brought forth to the view of a 

supposed observer upon the earth? The latter theory 

that they were not first brought into being then, but 
only brought into view from the earth — seems to me 
most probable, because — (1.) To suppose them created 
then would be out of all proportion for one day's work 
among the six. Throughout the other five days' work 
a beautiful proportion obtains : it should therefore be 

expected in this. If it be said that this consideration 

draws its great strength from our astronomical knowl- 
edge of those heavenly bodies — much more enlarged 
than those of the age of Moses, I answer (a.) Moses, 
" learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians," was not 
altogether a novice in astronomy — (b.) Modern astron- 
omy is essentially true, not overrating the relative 
magnitude of the heavenly bodies ; and this record in 
Genesis comes from one who knew all the truth. 

(2.) If these verses be understood to speak of their orig- 
inal creation, it would seem to be out of place here be- 
tween the creation of vegetables (third day) and of the 
earliest born animals (the fifth). But in the sense of 
bringing these heavenly bodies to view and the sun 



32 CREATION. 

into its normal action upon vegetables and upon ani- 
mal comfort, it is precisely in place. 

(3.) According to the interpretation given to v. 1 
(above) the matter composing these heavenly bodies 
was brought into existence " in the beginning " when 
"God created the heavens" as well as "the earth" and 
before the six days' work began. If so, then the inter- 
vening processes of modification must naturally have 
been going on from that time until this fourth day. 

(4.) Some expositors and scientists account for the 
light on the first day without the sun by means of elec- 
tricity or other chemical agents ; but it is scarcely pos- 
sible that Moses and his first readers could have thought 
of any thing but the sun as the source of that light, es- 
pecially because " God called it Day," and the darkness 
alternating with it then (as ever since the earth began 
its diurnal revolutions) " he called Night." This refer- 
ence to day and night must naturally carry every He- 
brew mind to the sun as the source of that light and to 
its well-known withdrawal at evening as the reason for 
the darkness and the night. It need not be sup- 
posed that the body of the sun was then visible. The 
state of the atmosphere might have admitted a portion 
of his light and yet not have disclosed his face. In our 
times we have seen cloudy, dark days, with no sun vis- 
ible, yet with a manifest distinction between day and 
night. 

7. The true sense of the record as to the origin (1) 
of vegetable life (vs. 11, 12), and (2) of animal life (vs. 

20, 21, 24, 25.) The important words are, "Let the 

earth bring forth grass " (v. 11) ; " and the earth brought 
forth grass" (v. 12). "Let the waters bring forth 
abundantly the moving creature," etc. (v. 20) ; " and 
God created every living creature that moveth which 
the waters brought forth abundantly" (v. 21). "Let 
the earth bring forth the living creature" (v. 24); "and 

God made the beast of the earth," etc. (v. 25). Here 

note that the historical statements give the true sense of the 
imperatives, and show plainly that the earth and the 
waters are not creative but only sustaining powers, and 
that they bring forth and sustain only under the fiat of 
the Almighty — only when and* as God said, Do it. For 
the whole tenor of these chapters (Gen. 1 and 2) pre- 
sents to us God himself as sole and supreme Creator. 



ON THE ORIGIN OF LIFE. 33 

In the closest connection with the earth's bringing forth 
the living creature, we are told that God made the beast 
of the field. Though the waters brought forth abun- 
dantly, yet it was still God himself who created " every 
living creature that moveth." The agency of the earth 
in producing grass is presented in a popular way — the 
precise, fundamental thought being, that God made the 
earth his instrument in bringing forth all things that 
grow ; and in like manner in sustaining animal life. 

If we will, we are at liberty to push our queries and 
ask not only who gave life, vegetable and animal, but 
how? In just what way did he impart that something — 
be it quality or power or substance — which we call life? 
and deeper still — What is life? Is it some subtle form 
of matter, or only some indefinable force given to mat- 
ter; and if this be it, To what special form of matter is 
it given ? If it be matter, did God sow the tiny germs 
thereof in the waters and on the land and leave them 
to be developed under auspicious circumstances? Or 
did he breathe forth from his own infinite life these 
life-forces into material things to make plants or ani- 
mals ? And yet again ; What was the status of that 

lump of dead matter (small or great) at the point when 
God put into it the life-force and it became living mat- 
ter, vegetable or animal? Was the first form of the 
living animal the egg, or its microscopic cell ; or was it 
the fully developed animal, prepared for all life's func- 
tions, and ready to furnish other life-bearing cells for 
reproduction ? On these points what says the record ? 
Not much at the utmost. It does seem to assume that 
Adam began existence, not an infant in the normally 
helpless condition of human birth, but with fully de- 
veloped powers. Beyond this we look in vain to the 
record for light. We only know that the life-force — 
that subtle entity which always eludes the most vig- 
ilant search — which distances all the strides of scien- 
tific scrutiny — which mocks at chemical analysis and 
never comes to our call ; — this life-force we simply know 
is from God himself and from God alone. The original 
gift of it is his prerogative and the secret thereof is for 
evermore with him. 

8. In the passage — "Let us make man in our 
image, after our likeness " (v. 26) there are two special 
points to be considered : — (a.) In what sense is man made 



34 CREATION. 

in the image of God? (b.) The explanation of the 
plural pronouns, " us " and "our " — " Let us make man in 
our image." 

(a.) Inasmuch as God is a spirit and never to be 
thought of as having a corporeal nature — material, tan- 
gible to our bodily senses, we are at once shut off from 
all reference to man's physical, corporeal nature and 
shut up to his spiritual nature to find in it the points 
of this resemblance. Consequently man is made in 
God's image as being gifted like his Maker with intel- 
ligence and with capacities for moral action — beyond 
comparison the noblest possible elements of being. He 
has the sense of moral obligation and the voluntary 
powers requisite to fulfill such obligation. He can find 
his supreme joy in voluntarily seeking the good of oth- 
ers, even of all other sentient beings, and in laboring 
even to the extent of self-sacrifice to promote their wel- 
fare. This is the pre-eminent perfection of God — the 
very point ultimately in which man is made in his 
image, and capable of becoming more and more God- 
like, forever approximating toward his holiness and 

blessedness. His intellectual powers are only the 

servants of these highest and noblest activities of his 

being. (b.) The use of the plural pronouns — " Let us 

make, in our image" — has been accounted for vari- 
ously. Some would make this plural intensive, cor- 
responding to the emphatic plural in Hebrew nouns. 
But there seems to be no real analogy in the two 

cases. Some make it the plural of dignity (" pluralis 

excellentiae "), as an oriental monarch puts forth his 
edict, saying " we," not I. But the great simplicity of 
this whole narrative goes against this explanation. 
Moreover, this usage, so far as it appears in literature, 
sacred or profane, is later by many ages than Moses. 
Besides, there is no apparent reason why God should 
assume more dignity in saying — "Let us make man," 
than in saying, Let us make light, or the sun in the 
heavens. Indeed, the form of the divine behest — "Let 
there be light," seems to our ideas the more sublime 

and the more expressive of God's supreme dignity. 

I see no explanation of this plural that is at all satis- 
factory save that which assumes a reference to the per- 
sons of the Trinity. As one reason for such reference 
it may be suggested as certainly not improbable — that 



MAN MADE IN GOD's IMAGE. 35 

the idea of man, God's chief work in creation, was 
coupled with his future history (all present to the di- 
vine mind) — as fallen, yet also as redeemed, and specially 
as redeemed by means of the incarnation of the Son of God in 
human flesh. Supposing this incarnation present to the 
divine thought, the significance of this plural would 
be — Let us proceed to make in our own image this won- 
derful being whose nature the eternal Son shall one 
day assume — this man who is to bear relations to us so 
extraordinary, so wonderful before the angels, so signal 
before all created minds, so glorious in its results to the 
whole moral universe ! Have not we — Father, Son and 
Holy Ghost — a most surpassing interest in the creation 
of this being, man ! 

9. The relation of Gen. 2: 4-25 to Gen. 1. 

Here are two points of some importance to be consid- 
ered. 

(1.) Are the two passages by the same author? 

(2.) Do they both speak of the creation of the same 
first man, i. e. the same Adam, or is the Adam of Gen. 
2 another and different first man, brought into being 
long subsequent to him of Gen. 1 : 26-28 ? 

(1.) That the two passages are from different authors 

has been maintained on the following grounds. 

(a.) That v. 4 — " These are the generations * of the 
heavens and the earth " — appears like the heading of 

a new and distinct portion of history. But nothing 

forbids that it should be the heading of a new section 
or chapter of the same continuous history by the same 
author, resuming his subject with only a very compre- 
hensive allusion to the great facts of creation which he 
had given in chap. 1, as fully as his plan required. 
This done he may proceed to a more full account ,of the 
creation of man and the events of his early history. 

(b.) That the account here differs somewhat from 

that in Gen. 1, e. g. as to the creation of man, and yet 

more especially, the creation of woman. But these 

differences are not discrepances and are fully accounted 
for by the scope and design of this portion, viz. to give 
the history of the first man and woman in much more 

*The word, "generations,'' obtains the secondary sense of family 
history and then the sense of history in general, from the fact that 
the earliest written historical records were so largely made up of 
genealogies— the records of human generations. 



36 CREATION : RELATION OF GEN. 2 TO GEN. 1. 

detail. (c.) But especially this diversity of authors 

has been argued from the different names of God which 
appear in these two passages. In chap. 1 and 2: 1-3, 
the name is simply and exclusively God (Elohim). In 
chap. 2 : 4-25 and in chap. 3, the name is " the Lord 

God" (Jehovah Elohim). This difference is indeed a 

palpable fact, and has been the theme of an indefinite 
amount of critical speculation based for the most part 
on the utterly groundless assumption that the same 
author can not be supposed to have used both these 
names for God. Those critics (mostly German) who 
have flooded their literature with disquisitions on this 
subject assume in the outset that none but a " Jehovist " 
ever used the name Jehovah, and none but an " Elo- 
hist," the name Elohim, it being in their view im- 
possible or at least absurd that the same author should 
use sometimes one of these names and sometimes the 
other — which assumption seems to me supremely arbi- 
trary, irrational, and uncritical. Authors now use at 
their option the various names for God, either for the 
mere sake of variety, or because in some connections 
one seems more euphonious or more significant than 
another. Why may not an equal license of choice be 
accorded to Hebrew writers ? It is unquestionable that 
the same Hebrew author does use both of these names 

for God. They made far more account than we of the 

various senses of the several names for the Deity. The 
names Jehovah and Elohim, were not precisely iden- 
tical in their suggested ideas, although both are legiti- 
mately used of the one true God. Elohim suggests that 
he is the Exalted, Eternal One, the Infinite Creator of 
all. This name is therefore specially appropriate in 
chap. 1. " Jehovah V conceives of him as the Immu- 
table and ever faithful One, coming into covenant rela- 
tion with his people as the Maker and the Fulfiller of 
promise. (See remarks on this as God's memorial name 
in my Notes on Hos. 12: 5). Hence as the narrative 
in Gen. 2 and 3 brings God before the mind in these 
special relations to the first human pair and to the race, 
this name is here specially appropriate. But lest some 
might suppose that this Jehovah is thought of as an- 
other God than the Elohim of chap. 1 — the writer uses 
both names — the Elohim who is also Jehovah to his 



CREATION : RELATION OF GEN. 2 TO GEN. 1. 37 

rational creature man and especially to all his obedient 
trustful people. 

(2.) That Gen. 2: 7 relates to the creation of the 
same first man as Gen. 1 : 26-28, and not of another man 
ages later, seems to me to admit of no rational doubt. 
The inducements to make out two distinct creations, 
L e. of two different first men, come from the supposed 
proof of the existence of man on the earth ages before 
the Adam of antediluvian history. I propose to treat 
below this question of the antiquity of man. Let it suf- 
fice here to say that we must not mutilate the record 
or disregard the laws of philology for the sake of making 
the sacred narrative conform to theories which are yet 

rather assumptions than scientifically proven facts. 

As to the correspondences and variations in the two 
narratives of the creation of man, the first makes prom- 
inent his being created in the image of God : the sec- 
ond assumes this in the fact that God gave him law 
in Eden ; in the knowledge of the lower animals which 
his naming them assumes ; in the superior dignity 
which the Lord's bringing them before him for names 
implies ; and in the fact that among them all no help- 
meet for him could be found. His nature ranked far 

above theirs. The earlier narrative says briefly that 

God " created them male and female." The later one 
expands this fact much more fully and makes it the 
foundation for the law of marriage. The later record 
treats with the utmost brevity the main part of the six 
days' work and must have been written with the pre- 
vious record before the mind, to be a supplementary and 
continuative history, designed to bring out prominently 
the creation of woman and the scenes of the garden, its 
moral trial and ultimately its results. The supposi- 
tion of a different Adam from that of the former record 
could never have occurred to the Hebrew mind, and 
therefore can not be accepted as the sense of the pas- 
sage. 

10. Invariability of " kind " in the vegetable and animal 
kingdoms. 

The record in Genesis sets forth that God created 
grass, herb, and then fruit tree; "each after his kind;" 
also reptiles, fish, fowl and land-animals, each " after 
his kind ; " and finally man " in the image of God." 
Over against this the modern theory which bears the 



38 creation : darwin's theory. 

name of Darwin holds that all the animals of our globe 
" have descended from at most only four or five pro- 
genitors, and plants from an equal or lesser number ; " * 
and moreover, that man has in this respect no pre-em- 
inence above the beasts, but has descended in the same 
line with them from some one of the four or five pro- 
genitors of the great animal kingdom. More still he 
says in the same connection — " Analogy would lead me 
one step further, viz. to the belief that all animals and 

plants have descended from some one prototype." 

These four or five progenitors of the whole animal king- 
dom correspond substantially with what Webster calls 
the five sub-kingdoms, viz. Vertebrates, Articulates, 
Mollusks, Radiates, and Protozoans. The technical 
classification under these sub-kingdoms into Classes, 
Orders, Families, Genera, and Species becomes of little 
or no account in any discussion of Darwin's system, for 
his theory of " descent with modifications " is reckless 
of all these lines of demarkation, traveling over and 
through them all without finding the least obstruction. 

Let it be distinctly understood therefore that though 

Mr. Darwin makes frequent use of the word " species," 
and 'entitles one of his volumes — " The Origin of Species" 
yet his theory takes a far wider range than the question 
whether "species are variable." In his view not only 
are species variable, intermixing, at will and passing 
from one into another, but genera also and families and 
orders and classes — not to say also each of the great 
sub-kingdoms of the animal world ; f even the distinc- 
tion between animals and vegetables fades away under 
his analogical argument. Hence the issue between Dar- 
win and Moses is relieved of whatever uncertainty hangs 

* Darwin's Origin of Species, p. 420. 

t " The Quadrumana and all the higher mammals are probably de- 
rived from an ancient marsupial animal, and this, through a long 
line of diversified forms, either from some reptile-like or some am- 
phibian-like creature, and this again from some fish-like animal. 
In the dim obscurity of the past we can see that the early progeni- 
tor of all the vertebratse must have been an aquatic animal, pro- 
vided with branchiae [gills] with the two sexes united in the same 
individual, and with the most important organs of the body (such 
as the brain and the heart) imperfectly developed. This animal 
seems to have been more like the larvae of our existing marine As- 
cidians than any other known form." Darwin's Descent of Man, 
vol. 2, 372. 



CREATION : DARWIN'S THEORY. 39 

over the dividing line between species and varieties, 
and may fitly be limited to these two points ; the in- 
variability of "kind" in the sense of Moses in Genesis; 
and the distinct origination of man. 

Under Mr. Darwin's system "community of descent" 
and not " some unknown plan of creation " is " the hid- 
den bond " which unites together all living existences 
of our globe. " Looking to some unknown plan of crea- 
tion " (in his own words) has prevented the truly scien- 
tific classification and history of the forms of life in our 
world. The Bible has stood in the way of the growth 

of science. Under his system the changes by natural 

descent from any given parent to its offspring, taken 
individually, have been exceedingly small. Hence the 
theory requires an indefinitely long time from the point 
of the original creation of the four or five primordial 
forms to the present status of living things, vegetable 

and animal, in our world. The above remarks will 

suffice for a very general introduction to Mr. Darwin's 
system. 

Wishing to bring this discussion within the narrow- 
est possible limits and yet do justice to Darwin, to Gen- 
esis, and to the truth, I propose to state briefly his main 
arguments ; then comprehensively my rejoinder to them 
severally in their order, and then subjoin some general 
considerations bearing upon his entire theory. 

1. Darwin holds that by natural law the offspring 
vary, though slightly, from the parent, and hence, that, 
given an indefinitely long time, he has any desired 
amount of variation. 

2. When animals multiply beyond the means of sub- 
sistence, there ensues a struggle for life in which the 
strongest and most favored in circumstances are the 
victors and survive. This law which he calls "Nat- 
ural Selection " (or " the survival of the fittest ") works 
a gradual improvement in the race. A twin argument 
with this comes from "sexual selection," the amount 
of which is that in the case of some at least of the ani- 
mal races, there arises a struggle among the males for 
the possession of the females, in which struggle the 
most attractive in beauty or in song, or the champions 
in fight, being the victors, perpetuate the race and thus 
improve it. This law of the animal races (" sexual se- 
lection ") works precisely in the same line with the law 



40 creation : darwin's theory. 

called " natural selection." It may serve therefore to 
provide a little more of the same thing, but no new or 
different product whatever. Hence it does not seem to 
call for a distinct refutation. 

3. Homologous anatomical structure is found to ob- 
tain very extensively among widely diverse races, e. g. 
in the arm of man, the fore-leg of the monkey and in- 
deed of all quadrupeds, in the wing of the bird and the 
fin of the fish. This indicates a common parentage. 

4. Some animals which, fully grown, differ from each 
other widely, are scarcely distinguishable in the em- 
bryo. Hence he infers their common origin. 

5. The fact of rudimentary organs is assumed to be 
historic, proving that some ancient progenitor used them, 
and that they have gradually passed out of use. This 
is held to prove that great changes of structure come of 
genealogical descent. 

BRIEF REPLIES. 

1. To Darwin's first law, viz. that the offspring al- 
ways vary though slightly from the parent, and there- 
fore, given indefinite time, he has any desired amount 
of variation, I reply that this law of variation becomes 
practically worthless for his theory, because these vari- 
ations from parent to offspring run in all conceivable 
directions and not in the one definite direction required 
for his purpose, L e. toward a higher grade of perfection, 
or [which his argument requires] toward a new form of 
animal life. For example, there is always some change 
in the human countenance from parent to child. Yet 
who does not know that those changes run in every 
possible direction and not in one uniform line of prog- 
ress or advance, as from monkey toward man and from 
man toward angel ? For another example we may take 
the shape of the skull and of the brain — evermore dif- 
fering slightly from parent to offspring yet not by any 
means on one given line. The skulls of Egyptian 
mummies entombed three thousand years ago do not differ 
appreciably from those of the Copts (their lineal descend- 
ants) of to-day, i. e. are no more pithecoid — ape-like. 
On Darwin's theory three thousand years backward 
ought surely to approximate toward the ape ; otherwise 
these variations are fruitless. This law of successive 
genealogical changes amounts to nothing for his argu- 



creation: dabwin's theory. 41 

ment unless the changes consent to come into line so that 
their results shall actually accumulate with the lapse of 
ages. The fatal lack in the argument is— no husbandry 
of these infinitesimal changes — not the least perceiva- 
ble accumulation. 

A second branch of my reply suggests that Mr. Dar- 
win misinterprets this law of nature, viz. perpetual vari- 
ation from parent to offspring. It is doubtless a law, 
but Darwin has quite missed its divinely ordained pur- 
pose — which is to indicate the relationship between 
parent and child on the one hand, and yet maintain 
individual identity on the other. The resemblances 
answer the former purpose ; the differences, the latter. 
Beings constituted to bear personal responsibilities so 
momentous as those of man must be so organized that 
every one can identify his own individuality, lest one 
man be hung for some other man's crime. 

2. His second argument comes from the law of " nat- 
ural selection" — "the survival of the fittest"— with 
which it is convenient to couple the precisely similar 
law of u sexual selection " — the ascendency of the smart- 
est over their inferiors, to perpetuate the race. Here a 
specific case will suffice both to illustrate and to refute. 
The principle of "natural selection" has a fair 
chance for itself in the spawn of the shad. It is no 
doubt true that none but the smartest out of the many 
thousand spawned at once survive so as to become 
parents in their turn. Yet who believes that these 
smartest shad are becoming sturgeon or sharks or 
whales by this law of progress? Are they actually 
found to be any thing but shad after never so many 
hundred generations? It may seem superfluous to 
push the still more pertinent question — Are these 
smartest and most ambitious shad really found to be 
working up out of their watery element, i. e. working 
up into ducks or geese, or into blackbirds and crows ? 
For just this is Mr. Darwin's theory — the line of ascent 
running up from fish to fowl ; from fowl to mammal and 
so on up to man. The questions here suggested are 
therefore only the fair and scientific test and touchstone 
of his argument. A law which has not made its re- 
sults even perceptible since the birth of the first shad 
known to human history must be regarded as scien- 
tifically worthless. 



42 

My second remark here is that Darwin errs not in 
finding these to be laws of nature — " natural selection/' 
"sexual selection" — but in interpreting them, i. e. in 
detecting their divinely ordained design and their actual 
working and product. I suggest that these laws, appar- 
ently made for the improvement of races, may be req- 
uisite to enable them to hold their own against the 
ever present tendency to degeneracy. Life is a perpet- 
ual struggle against death. The life-principle finds an 
antagonist force in chemical law which is evermore 
hurrying organized matter back to its inorganic state. 
Still further, be it considered, races excessively prolific 
would rapidly lose vitality but for these laws of natural 
and sexual selection. We may therefore rationally as- 
sume that these laws are simply forms of the general 
principle of self-preservation, and not a purposed provision 
for lifting a lower race up to the plane of a higher. 

3. As to homologous anatomical structure, e. g, of the 
arm, fore-leg, w r ing, fin, paddle — there are abundant 
reasons for its existence aside from the assumption of 
Darwin that it proves a common ancestry for man, 
moukey, calf, bull-dog, eagle, toad and whale. The 
ball and socket joint at man's shoulder is the perfect 
thing for use. Equally so is the same kind of joint for 
the fore -leg of a horse, the wing of an eagle or the fin of 
a fish. God made the anatomy of man's arm perfect. 
What forbids that he should make an equally perfect 
machinery for the motions and various uses of other an- 
imals? The reason of this uniformly perfect ma- 
chinery is found in the wisdom and benevolence of the 
Great Maker, and proves nothing in favor of a common 
descent from some one parent, i. e. it proves nothing 
unless you may assume that God could not have made 
two kinds of animals with homologous anatomical 
structures — two kinds, each with machinery perfect for 
its purposes. 

4. As to the similar appearance of the embryo in 
very dissimilar races, there may be differences in the 
embryo which no microscope and no human test have 
yet discovered. The force of this argument seems to me 
to come rather from ignorance than from knowledge. 

5. As to rudimentary organs, their history is very 
obscure and their design also. I suggest that Mr. Dar- 
win begin with the history and the reason for the ru- 



CREATION : DAIUYIN'S THEORY. 43 

dimentary organs which appear on the bosom of the 
male in the species man. When he shall have mas- 
tered this problem — the history and the reason — we can 
afford to consider his argument therefrom in proof that 
man has a common ancestry with whatsoever other an- 
imal he may find having this male organ, not rudi- 
mentary but in full activity. Probably he will prove 
that nfan must have come down by descent from that 
class of animals which economically combine the two 
sexes in one and the same individual ! 

Some objections of a more general bearing ujjon Darwin's 
scheme. 

1. His system requires indefinite, almost infinite, 
ages of time back of the Silurian strata, i. e. back of the 
oldest known remains of life, vegetable or animal, on 
our globe.* That is, he requires for the development 
of his system an almost infinite, extension of time back 
beyond the earliest traces or proofs of life, vegetable or 
animal, on our globe. And this, he would have men 
believe, is the perfection of modern Science ! — a science 
which pushes its sphere in time back indefinitely be- 
yond all known facts upon the bare evidence of the- 
ories and assumed analogies! But even this gives 

not the full force of the objection made by true Science 
to his system. It is not merely that he builds upon as- 
sumed facts where no known facts are — which is build- 
ing upon nothing — but where no facts can be, which is 
building not merely upon negatives but upon impossi- 
bilities. There is no room for his assumed facts where 
he locates them. If Geology proves any thing it proves 
that vegetable and animal life commenced on our planet 
as soon as the planet was ready and not sooner, and that 
we have the remains of the earliest living organisms in 
the oldest fossil-bearing rocks. His scheme is therefore 
conditioned upon impossibilities and must be false. 

2. His system requires a close succession of animal 
races, differing from parent to offspring by only the 

*"If my theory be true, it is indisputable that before the lowest 
Silurian stratum was deposited, long periods must have elapsed, as 
long as, or probably far longer than, the whole interval from the 
Silurian age to the present day ; and that, during these vast vet 
quite unknown periods of time, the world swarmed with living 
creatures." Darwin's Origin of Species, p. 269. 



44 creation: darwin's theory. 

least possible amount, with no leaps, no gaps whatever. 
Thus from monkey up to man the system calls for at 
least a few scores not to say hundreds of intermediate 
links. Where are they? His suffering theory cries 
out for their support : there is no answer. The earth's 
surface responds not to the call; even "the depths 
say — They are not in me ! " From the original monad 
up to man all the way through at least the long line of 
the vertebrates — reptile, fish, bird, mammal — that is to 
say, through the serpent tribe ; the fish kingdom ; the 
swallow, blackbird and eagle, and especially through 
the quadruped family — the horse and camel and partic- 
ularly the monkey household — through all this remark- 
able line of ancestry, Darwin's system demands a very 
gradual upward march by the shortest possible stages 
of progress, so that the intermediate links must be 
barely less than infinite. It certainly ought to be very 
easy to trace a genealogical line so well represented. 
It is estimated that thirty thousand fossil species have 
been recognized. How many of these can be formed 
into this genealogical line from the aboriginal verte- 
brate — supposed to be aquatic and Ascidian — up to 
man? Has Mr. Darwin set himself to marshal this 
proof-line of witnesses to his system ? No. Not only 
has he not done this very appropriate thing, but he has 
said little, quite too little on this most vital point, in 
the way of showing what could be done. He reiterates 
that the geological records are very imperfect. Doubt- 
less they quite fail to come up to meet the demands of 
his system. It is the fatal weakness of his theory that 
just where it should find facts in animal history for its 
support, they are not there ! He himself admits that 
if you believe in a tolerably full showing of animal his- 
tory in the geological records of our globe, you must 
disbelieve his system.* He needs quite another geo- 
logical record for his proofs. 

* These are his words — " Why then is not every geological forma- 
tion and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology 
assuredly does no* reveal any such finely graduated organic chain ; 
and this perhaps is the most obvious and gravest objection which 
can be urged against my theory. The explanation lies as I believe 

in the extreme imperfection of the geological records." And 

again — "He who rejects these views on the nature \i, e. the de- 
fects] of the geological record will rightly reject my whole theory. 



creation: darwin's theory. 45 

3. His argument is essentially materialistic. In his 
reasonings and assumptions, all there is of mind in 
man or any animal is of the brain and the nervous or- 
ganism. All animals have wants and are moved by a 
sense of want to supply them. This begets self -orig- 
inated activity, and this activity involves thought — 
yet only as a function of the material brain. Most of 
the animals are social by nature : hence another mem- 
ber in this family of wants and enjoyments, begetting 
another class of impulses and activities. But whether 
it be man or monkey, dog or kitten, these activities 
and these plans and thoughts underlying them, come of 
the nervous organism, of which the brain is the center. 
On his theory and in his words (Origin of Species, pp. 
93, 94) "the moral sense is fundamentally identical 
with the social instinct." Hence it becomes the burden 
of his argument that the brain in man and in monkey 
is homologous — almost perfectly the same in shape, in 
quality, and in its bony incasement. He seems to be 
quite unaware that there may be something in the hu- 
man brain that a twelve-inch rule will not measure, 
nor the nicest made scales weigh, nor the sharpest 
chemical tests discern. It seems never to have occurred 
to him that even if the brain of man and of monkey 
weighed in the same notch, fitted into the same cast, 
responded alike to the same chemical tests (which, 
however, is a good way from being the case), yet there 
might be material qualities in the human brain too 
subtle and ethereal to be appreciable under any known 
physical test; and much more still might be a spirit 
inhabiting the human brain and working through it 
which the monkey has not. " That the breath of the 
Almighty hath given to man understanding " is a fact 
higher than the range of Darwin's philosophy. The 
prima facie probability thence arising that God would 
fit up a special material organism for the one only 
mind made in his own image seems to have entirely 
escaped Mr. Darwin's notice. The record by Moses on 

For he may ask in vain: Where are the numberless transitional 
links which must formerly have connected the closely allied or 
representative species found in the several stages of the great forma- 
tions? He may ask, Where are the remains of those numerous or- 
ganisms which must have existed long before the first bed of the 
Silurian system was deposited?" Origin of Species, pp. 246, 299. 



46 creation : darwin's theory. 

this point — that God created man by a special act, en- 
tirely independent of all other forms of life, vegetable 
or animal, commends itself to the good sense of most 
men as more than probable, as indeed supremely ra- 
tional and unquestionably true. 

4. It is but a natural result of his materialistic sys- 
tem that he should have no adequate conception of the 
pre-eminent glory of man's intellectual and moral nature. 
With great ingenuity he labors to make it appear that 
Tray feels shame and guilt and even the moral sense 
of oughtness — all the same in kind with those of man. 
He does not say in definite words that the best devel- 
oped dog is capable of knowing his divine Creator and 
of rendering to Him the obedience, love, and homage of 
an adoring heart — is capable of becoming consciously a 
trustful child of God and a temple of the Holy Ghost. 
He does not quite say this; indeed he does not seem to 
appreciate these exalted functions of a soul made 
in God's image, or to think them worthy of par- 
ticular notice. It is a capital fault in his reasoning 
that he ignores almost entirely these highest, noblest 
activities of man's nature. Thus ignoring these most 
vital points which lift man so high above all the lower 
animals, how can it be expected that his reasoning 
upon the material relations of man and beast should be 
otherwise than lame and fallacious ? 

5. Scientifically it is a sufficient condemnation of this 
system that it is compelled to fritter away the funda- 
mental law of species which God fixed, not upon its 
surface but deep in its nature, viz. that hybrids shall 
be infertile — incapable of propagation. The crossing 
and consequent interblending of distinct species, gen- 
era, families, and orders, if by their nature possible, 
would long ages ago have thrown the animal world into 
inextricable confusion, effacing every line of distinction. 
Such a result must have been simply fatal to all scien- 
tific classification. If Mr. Darwin's theories had been 
taken as the divine plan, the world would have had 
more grades and orders of animal life than there have 
been days since the first monad came into being. 

6. The scheme is in many points revolting to the 
common sense and sober convictions of men. Some of 
its assumptions lie close upon the border of the ridicu- 
lous. Think of the stride upward from vegetable life 



creation : darwin's theory. 47 

to animal — the plant pulling its roots out from the soil 
and beginning to use them for legs ! And of the very 
analogous aspirations and endeavors of the fish to live 
out of water — to push out his fins into wings ; convert 
his superabundant fat into muscle ; expand his lungs 
and soar off in mid-heaven — the very eagle himself! 
The effort to tone down these absurdities within the 
limits of sober sense by simply taking it little by little, 
spreading the change over a few thousands or millions 
of years and subdividing the work among a vast num- 
ber of generations may help to confuse some minds and 
blunt the edge of its absurdity ; but soberly considered, 
the absurdity is still there. Hence we may note the 
fact that most writers seem to find themselves quite 
unable to discuss this theory to any extent without 
sliding, perhaps unconsciously, from sober argument 
into ridicule and irony. 

I am well aware that, to abate if not nullify the force 
of this apparent absurdity, it will be said that along the 
actual line between plant life and animal life, the veg- 
etable and animal kingdoms are actually brought closely 
side by side ; that plant life shades off by almost imper- 
ceptible stages till it comes so near to the lowest forms 
of animal life that the dividing line is scarcely if at all 
perceptible. This fact no scientist disputes. The real 
question turns upon its purposed object or ultimate 
reason. Is it, as Mr. Darwin's theory assumes, to bridge 
over this dividing line and facilitate the march of " gen- 
ealogical descent with variations" across what else 
would be a bad if not an impassable gulf ? 

This being the claim set up by Mr. Darwin, I answer — 
(a.) The proper test of this theory is simple : Is there 
any "march" here at all — i. e. any progressive movement 
from one form of vegetable life to another, from lower 
forms to higher, or as this case seems to demand, from 
higher forms to lower, for along this dividing line we 
have the lowest known forms of both vegetable life and 
animal ? Is this army of the lowest vegetable species 
and of animal life-forms, down in this dark microscopic 
valley, really on the march, or is it absolutely moveless 
and fixed? Are the flora on the vegetable side of the 
line really doffing their plant-life uniform and regalia, 
and emerging on the other side of the line into fauna 
to swell the hosts of animal-life forms ? This it would 



48 creation: darwin's theory. 

seem must be the test for the proof or disproof of Dar- 
win's theory. 

(b.) But again, I would reply in this as in other 
points; Mr. Darwin misses not so much the facts of 
nature as the ultimate reason of those facts. What 
is the ultimate reason for the remarkable fact that 
the plant kingdom crowds itself so closely upon the 
confines of the animal ? Not, I answer, to facilitate the 
transit of generations from the one province to the 
other. Of such transit there is not the first shade of 
evidence. But the reason is that the Great Author of 
nature out of his infinite resources has filled both king- 
doms perfectly full of life-forms so that no territory between 
their respective domains lies unoccupied. It is simply 
a fecundity of life-forms or species, analogous to the 
fecundity of living representatives under most of these 
species — all alike traceable to the infinite resources of 
the Creator's wisdom and power. 

7. Finally, this theory is reckless of the authority of 
revelation. It makes no effort to reconcile its doctrines 
with the testimony of the Scriptures. Especially on 
the great points of the creation of man — as to his body, 
independent of all other animals ; as to his spirit, made 
in the very image of God; and as to woman, formed 
from man — this system stands in absolute antagonism 

with God's word. It should not surprise us, therefore, 

that the common sense of mankind (with rare excep- 
tions) revolts from its absurdities. It should not sur- 
prise us that Science — the true Science which builds, 
not on unsupported assumptions but on ascertained and 
incontestable facts— should disown these theories and 
speculations. True Science, here as elsewhere, now and 
forever, is at one with Revelation ; and these pillars of 
the great temple of Truth are in not the least danger 
of being shaken. 



CHAPTER II. 



THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 

Under this head several questions arise : 

1. Is the human family older than the Adam of Scripture 
history f 

2. How far back really is the date of Adam? i. e. How 
many years intervened from Adam to the flood and 
how many to the Christian era? 

Subsidiary questions are — 

(a.) Were there one or more races of primeval men 
pre-Adamic but now extinct ? 

(b.) Have there been various " head-centers " of the ex- 
isting human family; or only one and that Adam? Or 
(the same question in another form) are all the living 
varieties of race lineally descended from Adam and all 
from Noah? 

The special interest of these questions will hinge 
upon their relation to the Scriptures— i. e. their sup- 
posed or real bearing upon the truth of the Scripture 
history — the friends of the Bible desiring to know 
whether any well sustained facts exist to affect its 
credit, or to modify its currently received interpreta- 
tion : and on the other hand, men whose sympa- 
thies are not with the Bible, being inquisitive to see 
if by any means its authority can be impugned or im- 
paired. It is obvious that this sort of special inter- 
est, for or against the Bible, is liable to affect the can- 
dor and fairness of the investigation on either side. 
The friends of the Bible, however, have really not the 
least occasioif to fear for its stability. It is indeed pos- 
sible that our interpretation of its chronology may re- 
quire modification — but always and only toward truth. 
Also we may have erred in supposing the Bible to have 
taught what it never intended to teach. But the real 
word of God can have nothing to fear from the advance 
of human science — that is to say, from the real knowl- 
edge of actual facts. With the utmost composure, 

therefore, we welcome all candid investigation, subject- 
ing every new theory to appropriate scrutiny, sifting 

(49) 



50 ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 

the evidence on which it rests with no prejudice for or 
against the conclusions to which it may compel us. 

1. The high antiquity claimed for man is fitly the first 
question in order. Here the evidence comes and of 
necessity must come 

(1.) From traces of man upon the crust of the earth, 
L e. in the rock-strata, the drift-deposits, or in caves 
and lake-dwellings, or in monuments of human labor 
and skill : 

And (2.) from the traditions of the most ancient na- 
tions and the high antiquity of their existence, civili- 
zation, and monuments. 

Under the first head the traces are either : 

(A.) Remains of the human skeleton; or 

(B.) Remains of man's work and of his tools. 

(A.) As to the remains of the human skeleton. 

By universal admission these remains are not found 
in the rocks that bear in abundance the fossil vegeta- 
bles of the third great epoch of creation ; nor in those 
yet higher strata that contain the oldest forms of an- 
imal life whose home is in the waters; nor is man 
found with the reptiles, say of the fifth day of creation; 
nor indeed until we come to deposits of the most recent 
date,' of a kind at least similar to those which are 
known to be forming within the historic age of man. 

From these admitted facts I make this special point, 
viz. that if man had lived on the earth contemporary 
with the oldest animal species, we ought to find not 
merely one skeleton or half a skeleton buried along-side 
of myriads of fossil sea-shells and fishes, but a fair show 
of specimens, so many at least as to leave no question 
as to his being a joint occupant with them of the earth 
as it then was. One or two, or even a dozen skeletons, 
gathered from every explored portion of the earth's 
surface, are too few for the base of a theory like this 
because such scattered cases, in number so meager, are 
always subject, more or less, to abatement from the fol- 
lowing possibilities: 

(a.) The human family in all ages have buried their 
dead, and often, during the earlier ages, in rock-hewn 
sepulchers or in natural caves; 

(b.) In all ages of the world men have been liable to 
fall into rock-fissures and ravines and to die there; and 
to leave their skeletons to become fossil there, particu- 



REMAINS OF HIS SKELETON. 51 

larly in calcareous and similar rocks where decomposi- 
tion or solution in water and new deposits are in 
progress ; 

(c.) Men have been wont to frequent caves for shelter, 
for safety in war or from persecution, and consequently 
might leave their bones there; or 

(d.) Their bones may have been dragged into cav- 
erns by flesh-eating animals or borne into strange posi- 
tions by underground currents of water; or again, 

(e.) Since the historic Adam, drift deposits have in 
some circumstances been forming under water, in which 
waters men have been liable to be drowned and their 
skeletons to become imbedded in those deposits. Changes 
of elevation may bring such deposits to view. 

Such possibilities must practically nullify confidence 
in the proof of man's high antiquity from his bones so 
long as the specimens are so exceedingly few and even 
these few found only quite near the surface. 

This argument will be appreciated by those who duly 
consider, on the one hand, that if man were on the 
earth in those pre-Adamic ages, it is in the highest de- 
gree improbable that his population ranged at a dozen 
for the area of all France, and a few hundreds only to a 
continent — for what should forbid him as well as the 
lower animals to "be fruitful and multiply and replen- 
ish the earth ?; ? Besides, a population so sparse and 
consequently weak could have made no stand against 

armies of hyenas, leopards, bears and lions. On the 

other hand, the occurrence of human bones, in num- 
bers so very few and so remote from each other, will be 
much more rationally accounted for by the possibilities 
above indicated. 

Yet let it be understood : — The way is open for any 
extent of further investigation. We have no occasion 
to fear the result of the search. Let the rocks be torn 
up and examined ; let mountains be tunneled and ca- 
nals be dug; let railroad grading go where it will; if 
the human skeleton should be found where none of 
these or similar possibilities admit its date since Adam, 
we will certainly give the case all due consideration 
and weight. 

(B.) Next is the argument from man's ivorlc and from his 
tools. 



52 ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 

Here a larger field opens. My limits scarcely allow 
me to do more than indicate briefly the present state 

of the question. Thus far explorations have been 

mostly restricted to Northern and Western Europe, say 
north of the Alps and of ancient Greece, in the regions 
anciently known as Gaul, Germany, Scandinavia and 
Britain. The supposed remains of man's tools and 
work are found chiefly in caves and lake-dwellings, or 
under drift, and only to a small extent in monuments 
above the present surface. The lake-dwellings specially 
referred to are in Switzerland, where during the very 
dry winter of 1853-4 several remarkable villages were 
found built on piles below the present average water- 
mark, which were once without doubt the abodes of 
men, with quite abundant traces indicating their modes 
of life, civilization, implements, and the contemporary 
animal races.* 

The various stages of civilization developed in these 
ancient remains have been usually classified under 
three heads: 

1. The Stone age, in which man's cutting imple- 
ments, working tools and weapons of war, were of stone. 
This age is sometimes subdivided, the older part being 
called " Palaeolithic " [old stone], and the more recent, 
" Neolithic " [new stone]. 

2. The Bronze age, its implements being chiefly of 
copper or brass. 

3. The Iron age, where iron first appears. 

Now the great question — the only one that comes 
within our range of inquiry — is the date of these traces 
of ancient men. When did the men of the Stone age 
and of the Bronze and the Iron age live ? 

In the outset, it can not be assumed reasonably that 
this stone-age civilization, apparent in Northern and 
Western Europe, was necessarily universal at that time over 
all the earth. It may have been coeval with the very 
high civilization of Egypt and even of Babylonia, Phe- 
nicia, Etruria. We must consider that large portions 
of the world in those early times were unknown to each 
other, even as interior Africa has been unknown to the 
civilized world almost to this very hour. It is therefore 
entirely an open question — Was this stone-age civili- 

* See Thompson's "Man in Genesis and in Geology," pp. 88-90, 
and Lyell on the Antiquity of Man, pp. 17-29. 



ARGUMENT FROM HIS WORKS. 53 

zation pre-Adamic ? Was it anterior to Noah ; or shall 
its place in the ages be found contemporaneous with the 
early civilized nations of known history ? 

It is important here to premise yet further that the 
earth's surface has at no very remote period experienced 
considerable elevations and depressions and changes of 
temperature. Especially there are proofs of an extraor- 
dinary period of glaciers and icebergs, by means of 
which huge bowlders have been transported from their 
ancient beds and scattered afar, and vast masses of 
debris, rocks ground down and pulverized, mixed with 
sand, gravel, and small stones, have been heaped up 
along the line of the glaciers and spread over their 
track. It is not easy to conceive the full measure of 
utility resulting from this great ice-flood and glacier 
movement, in grinding the surface of the rocky strata 
and mixing this finely pulverized matter with decom- 
posed vegetable elements to prepare soil for our earth's 
surface. 

The opinion is becoming general that man was not 
placed upon the earth until after this glacial and ice- 
bound age. He could not have lived here then : cer- 
tainly not in portions reached by glacial action and ice 
floods; the earth was not ready for him till afterwards. 
No decisive traces of his presence at an earlier period 
have been found. Such traces appear shortly after. 

The problem of the time of man's first appearance 
upon the earth is for the most part one of estimates; and 
these estimates in the department of geology are com- 
prised, at least chiefly, under these five heads : 

(1.) The time required for the alluvial deposits under- 
neath which his remains or implements have been 
found. 

(2.) The time required for the growth of the peat under 
which we find man or his works. 

(3.) The time required for the succession of forest 
growths since his first appearance. 

(4.) The age of the animal races, extinct or living, 
whose remains are found associated with his. 

(5.) We have next and last another source of testi- 
mony which is mainly free from the uncertainties of 
estimate, viz. the question of commercial relations be- 
tween the barbarous stone-age, bronze-age, or iron-age 
tribes, and the civilized nations of the early historic ages. 



54 ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 

The estimates on these several points demand distinct 
consideration. 

(1.) The estimate of the time required for the alluvial 
deposits along the banks of rivers, has been extremely 
various. Lyell, having visited the delta of the Missis- 
sippi river in person, estimated its time-period of accu- 
mulation at one hundred thousand years.* But a care- 
ful examination made by gentlemen of the Coast 
Survey and other United States officers, reduces this 
time-period to four thousand and four hundred years.f 
Again, Mr. Lyell estimates that 220,000 years are neces- 
sary to account for changes now going on upon the coast 
of Sweden. Later geologists reduce the time to one- 
tenth of that estimate. A piece of pottery was discov- 
ered deeply buried under the deposits at the mouth of 
the Nile. It was confidently asserted that the deposits 
could not have been made during the historic period, 
until it was proved that the article in question was of 
Roman manufacture. J Such diversities suffice to show 
at least that somebody has blundered. Some of these 
high estimates a,re gratuitously extravagant. All esti- 
mates from the drift deposits, bearing on the antiquity 
of man, ought in reason to be made with careful refer- 
ence t'o these two modifying considerations : 

(a.) That drift deposits may have been, and with the 

*Lyeirs Antiquity of Man, pp. 43 and 204. 

tSee Eeport upon the Physics and Hydraulics of the Mississippi 
River by Capt. A. A. Humphreys and Lieut. H. L. Abbott ; 1861, pp. 
435. 

The following extract will impress the reader as at once definite 

and reliable. " If it be assumed that the rate of progress has been 

uniform to the present day — and there are some considerations con- 
nected with the manner in which the river pushes the bar into the 
gulf each year which tend to establish the correctness of that opin- 
ion — the number of years which have elapsed since the river began 
to advance into the gulf can be computed. The present rate of prog- 
ress of the mouth may be obtained by a careful comparison of the 
progress of all the mouths of the river as shown by the maps of Capt. 
Talbot, United States Engineer, 1838, and of the United States 
Coast Survey in 1851 — the only maps that admit of such compari- 
son. They give two hundred and sixty-two feet for the mean yearly 
advance of all the passes. This mean advance of all the passes 

represents correctly the advance of the river Adopting this 

rate of progress (two hundred and sixty-two feet per annum) four 
thousand four hundred years have elapsed since the river began to 
advance into the gulf." Bib. Sacra., April, 1873, p. 331. 

t Hodge's Systematic Theology, vol. 2, p. 33. 



ARGUMENT PKOM HIS WORKS. 55 

utmost probability were, much more rapid in the ear- 
lier ages than at present. At the close of the glacial 
and ice period vast masses of loose matter were ready to 
be swept rapidly as drift by river freshets. Any farmer 
may have an illustration of this if he will plow his 
side-hill field, running his furrows up and down the 
hill. He will find that the first powerful shower will 
bring down far more drift than the fortieth. It would 
be very short-sighted in him to take the drift of the 
tenth year after the said plowing for his rate of annual 
deposition and estimate the whole period from this data. 
But on this mistaken principle some geologists have 
made their time estimates for the drift simply mon- 
strous. 

(b.) Human remains and tools may in many ways 
get far below the surface of the drift. They may have 
been buried under it after its deposition. While the 
drift lay under water, (soft and pliable therefore,) flints, 
arrow-heads, knives, or human bones, may have sunk 

in the mire. These and similar considerations may 

demand large abatement from the time-estimates built 
upon the amount of drift found above the remains of 
man. 

We may apply these modifying considerations to the 
case given by Lyell (Antiquity of Man, pp. 27, 28) of 
the drift deposits near the Lake of Geneva. Here are 
five inches in thickness deposited since the Roman 
period (known by its enclosed memorials) which we 
safely put at 1800 years. Next below is a strata of six 
inches depth, marked by bronze implements, which he 
estimates to reach back from the present time, 3000 to 
4000 years. Similarly, the next strata (seven inches) 
indicated as the Stone age, he counts at 5000 to 7000 
years old. But if the depositions were much more rapid 
in the early than in the later ages of our world, these 
estimates for the ages of bronze and of stone must be 
materially shortened, and may reasonably be brought 
within the historic period of man. 

(2.) The time required for the formation of peat beds 
has been usually estimated upon its observed growth 
and accumulation at the present day. Yet in the case 
of peat-growth as in the case of drift-deposits, it is at 
least possible and would seem highly probable that its 
growth and deposition were much more rapid during 



56 ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 

the earlier ages of our race than at present. The vir- 
gin soil was richer ; the climatic influences may have 
been more propitious. It should be considered also 
here (as in the case of drift) that the remains of man 
and his implements, instead of resting invariably upon 
the surface of the peat, may by various means have 
gone down much below the surface. The time of man's 
presence, therefore, as measured by the time estimated 
to be necessary for the deposit of the peat found above 
him, may be quite overestimated. 

The peat beds of Denmark are put by Lyell (An- 
tiquity of Man, p. 17) at a minimum of 4000 years. 
In the valley of the Somme (France) they are found 30 
feet deep ; and in its upper strata there are Romish and 
Celtic memorials, showing that its depositions contin- 
ued a considerable time after the historic age of Rome. 

(3.) The time required for the succession of forest 
growths since the appearance of man. 

Geologists find in Denmark, earliest, a growth of Scotch 
fir ; next, of oak ; last, coming down to the present, of 
the beech. The age of civilization known as the Stone 
age synchronizes nearly with the fir; the Bronze age 
with the oak ; the historic period with iron implements 
answers to the beech.* Now the problem is — How 
much time is required for one species of forest growths 
to run its course and become supplanted by another ? 

Obviously this problem must depend not on time 

alone, but on climatic changes. Moreover, one kind of 
trees may require less time than another to exhaust the 
soil of the elements specially congenial to its health, 
vigor and stability. I do not see that any reliable 
measure of time can be found for estimating the life- 
period of different species of forest growths. 

(4.) Attempts have been made to estimate the an- 
tiquity of man from the animal races with which his 
remains have been found associated. The animals 
brought into this estimate have been chiefly the mam- 
mals, quadrupeds, most nearly related, by anatomical 
structure, to man. Great account has been made of the 
fact that the remains of man (his bones or his tools) 
have been found in connection with the remains of land 
animals now extinct. The uncertain element in all 
such calculations is the date at which the said animal 
* See LyelPs Antiquity of Man, pp. 9-11. 



ARGUMENT FROM HIS WORKS. 57 

species became extinct. This is perhaps fully as doubt- 
ful as the age at which man began to live on the earth. 
So far as is known, some species have disappeared within 
the present century; e.g. the Great Auk, or Northern 
Penguin (alca impennis), last seen alive in 1844. Sev- 
eral species, once quite prominent for their hugeness 
or other qualities, are supposed to have disappeared 
within the historic period of man ; e. g. the mammoth, 
the mastodon, the woolly rhinoceros, the cave-bear, etc. 
But precisely when they severally became extinct, no 
existing data suffice to show. Of course it avails little 
to prove that man was coeval with a few animal races 
now extinct. 

(5.) Far more important in my view is the light 
thrown upon the antiquity of the Bronze and Iron ages 
of civilization in Northern and Western Europe by the 
traces of commercial relations between those respective 
peoples and the civilized nations of the known historic 
ages. In this case, the elements of uncertainty common 
to the preceding estimates are mostly if not wholly 
eliminated. When among the relics of the Bronze age, 
say in Switzerland or in Denmark, we find art-speci- 
mens, valuable for use or beauty, which manifestly 
came from Phenicia, Etruria, or Egypt, bearing unmis- 
takably the stamp of their civilization, and specifically, 
of their art, we need no further proof that the old Bronze 
age lay in time along-side of the reign of Etrurian or 
Egyptian art and civilization. On this subject the 
British Quarterly (Oct., 1872) on " The present Phase 
of Pre-historic Archeology" discusses the question 
whether the Bronze civilization in Central and North- 
ern Europe was introduced by an invading people from 
the East, or by peaceful commerce with the peoples 
contiguous to the Mediterranean, viz. the Phenicians 
of Palestine, the Etrurians of Italy, and the Egyptians. 
The argument is strongly in favor of the latter alterna- 
tive. " The beautiful bronze swords, spear-heads, axes, 
knives, razors, etc., which lie scattered over Northern 
and Central Europe are remarkable for the singular 
beauty of their form and ornamentation " — all bearing 
so much unity of design as to prove a common origin 
from the same source. "The double spirals, and dotted 
circles and spirals and zigzag ornaments which are so 
common on the bronze articles of France, Germany, 



58 ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 

Britain, Ireland, and Scandinavia are identical with the 
designs which are found in Etruscan tombs. Some of the 
bronze swords and spear-heads are also identical; and 
the peculiar spuds and bronze axes, used by the Etrus- 
cans, are similar to those which are found in Northern 
Europe." (pp. 247, 248). The limits of my plan for- 
bid a full presentation of this argument. Suffice it to 
say briefly that very great progress has been made 
within the last fifty years toward disentombing the 
pre-historical ages of Central and Northern Europe, and 
bringing out their relation to the early historic civili- 
zation of Egypt, Phenicia, and Etruria. The results 
thus far seem to identify the oldest race of man as 
known by his remains (i e. they of the earlier Stone 
age) with the Esquimaux of Lapland ; the men of the 
later Stone age, with the Iberian or Basque people of 
Spain; after whom were the Celts and the Belgse who 
were on the field at the period where Roman history 

touches Britain and Gaul. How far back in time 

those Esquimau tribes lie, it seems yet impossible to de- 
termine; but the next wave of population — they of 
the later Stone age — falls far within the period of 
scripture chronology — not necessarily older than the 
Phenicians, Assyrians, and Egyptians. Inasmuch as 
Phenician art and commerce were in their glory during 
the reigns of David and Solomon, we may at least pro- 
vide a considerable interval of time for the Esquimau 
tribes of the older Stone age before we encounter the 
deluge of Noah, and much more still, before we come 
up to Adam. It is a fact of no trifling importance that 
the oldest race detected by the explorers of the earth's 
crust can be so clearly identified with the Esquimaux 
now occupying the highest northern latitudes inhab- 
ited by man. 

More abundant still are the proofs which bring the 
Bronze and Iron ages of Northern Europe within what 
were the historic times of the nations on the borders of 

the Mediterranean. The estimates made by some 

geologists and antiquarians which carry the later Stone, 
the Bronze, and the Iron peoples back into the mighty 
Past anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000 years seem to me 
extremely fanciful and unscientific. Thorough investi- 
gation into all the facts bearing on the case coupled 
with sober estimates of the time which they indicate, 



VERY ANCIENT TRADITIONS. 59 

will at no distant day bring this problem of the an- 
tiquity of man to a satisfactory solution. It does not 
become us to fear any revelations which come legiti- 
mately from well ascertained facts. 

Another argument for the high antiquity of man has 
been drawn from the traditions of the most ancient nations — 
China and India; also from the great population, the early 
civilization, and the art-monuments of Egypt, 

On the point of the traditions and chronologies of the 
ancient nations of the East, the first problem is to as- 
certain what they are and what they claim. If they 
run up their figures (as sometimes said) to 20,000 years, 
the extravagance of the claim vitiates its credibility.* 
We put it to the account of fancy and fiction, or of 
national pride, and rule it out from the realm of historic 
science. But if as estimated by Bailly (Kitto; Chronol- 
ogy, p. 434) the years from the Christian era back to 
the creation are put in Chinese chronology at 6157; in 
the Babylonian, at 6158 ; and in the Indian (by Gentil) 
at 6174, we give these chronologies our respectful at- 
tention. The fact that the extreme difference in these 
three is but seventeen years is certainly striking, and 
indicates either a common origin of authority or an ap- 
proximation toward the truth; perhaps both. We 
shall soon have occasion to compare these figures with 
the latest and most approved results of Biblical chro- 
nology. 

As to the age of Egyptian art, civilization, and polit- 
ical power, the time allowed for its development in 
harmony with Usher's chronology (the one usually in- 
dicated in editions of the English Bible) must be ad- 
mitted to be short — almost incredibly short. Here I 
submit that the primary question should be — the cor- 
rectness of Usher. Let the Bible system of chronol- 
ogy be rigidly scanned — not for the purpose of making 
it tally with Egyptian claims, or with any other system 
of chronology not sacred ; but for the purpose of arriv- 
ing at the truth as ascertainable from the Bible itself. 

* See " Antiquity and Unity of the Human Kace," by Eev. Eben- 
ezer Burgess, pp. 25-30. 



CHAPTER III. 

HEBEEW CHKONOLOGY. 

From the Birth of Christ to the Creation. 

By general consent the birth of Christ is made the 
central point of all sacred chronology, the Christian 
ages being reckoned forward from that point (A. D.) 
and the Jewish or earlier ages being reckoned back- 
ward (B. C). We treat of the latter only. Going 

backward from the Christian era, there is general agree- 
ment and no reasonable ground for diversity till we reach 
the period of the Judges of Israel. The cardinal points are : 

B. C. 

The decree of Cyrus for the restoration of the Jews. 536 

The duration of the captivity, from the fourth year 

of Jehoiakim, 70 years 606 

(But counted from the fall of the city under Zede- 
kiah, 52 years only.) 

From the revolt, first year of Rehoboam to the fall 

of the city, 388 years 976 

To the founding of the temple, beginning of Solo- 
mon's fourth year, 37 years 1013 

This last epoch has chronological importance — the 
foundation of the temple laid — A. D. 1013. 

The first disputed, diversely estimated, point is the 
period of the Judges; yet the proof texts and authorities 
cover the period from the Exodus to the temple. 
Usher makes the period of the Judges 339 years : Jahn 
and many others, 450. Usher relies on 1 K. 6 : 1 : " In 
the 480th year after the children of Israel were come 
out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solo- 
mon's reign over Israel he began to build the 

house of the Lord." 

His computation runs thus : 

YEARS. 

Hebrews in the wilderness 40 

Hebrews under Joshua . * 17 

(60) 



PERIOD OF THE JUDGES. 61 



YEARS. 



Samuel and Saul together* 40 

David (2 Sam. 5 : 4, 5) , 41 

Solomon up to the founding of the temple 3 

Judges— to fill out 480 339 

480 

The long period for the Judges rests primarily on 
Acts 13 : 20, which states that " after having divided to 
them the land of Canaan by lot, God gave them judges 
450 years until Samuel the prophet." Placing 450 in 
the above computation in place of 339 — an excess of 
111 years — we find the date of the Exodus B. C. 1604 in- 
stead of Usher's figures A. D. 1491. 

In support of this long period for the Judges may be 
urged — 

(1.) The authority of Paul as above (Acts 13: 20) 
which makes this period 450 years. 

(2.) Josephus makes the interval from the Exodus to 
the founding of the temple 592 years, and not 480. The 
Jews of China also make it 592 — facts which favor the 
supposition that the Hebrew text of IK. 6: 1, is in 
error. It can not be supposed that either Josephus or 
the Chinese Jews adjusted their figures to harmonize 
with Paul. 

(3.) The internal dates in the Book of Judges demand 
the long period and can not be harmonized with the 
short one. Thus Judges 11 : 26 shows that the He- 
brews had then dwelt in Heshbon, Aroer and along the 
coast of Arnon 300 years. These years lie between the 
entrance into Canaan and the beginning of Jephthah's 
judgeship. We have then this computation : 

YEAES. 

300 years, minus 17 years for the term of Joshua, is.. 283 

Add for Jephthah (Judg. 12 : 6) 6 

For Ibzan 7 years; for Elon 10; for Abdon 8 (accord- 
ing to Judg. 12 : 8, 11, 14) 25 

Servitude to the Philistines (Judg. 13 : 1) 40 

Sampson (Judg. 15 : 20 and 16 : 31) not less than. . . 20 
Eli (1 Sam. 4 : 18) 40 

* Josephus states explicitly that Samuel and Saul combined fill 
out 40 years. 



62 HEBREW CHRONOLOGY. 



A period without dates (narrated Judg. 17-21) esti- 
mated at 40 

Makes a total of 454 

It is entirely impossible to bring these internal dates 
in the history within the short period of 339 years for 
the Judges. We must therefore accept the long pe- 
riod — 450 years — and place the Exodus in 1013+591= 
B. C. 1604. 

The next period of conflicting authorities is the So- 
journ in Egypt The issue lies between the long period, 

430 years, and the short one, 215 years. The first 

proof text is Ex. 12: 40: "Now the sojourning of the 
children of Israel who dwelt in Egypt was 430 years." 
Next is Gen. 15 : 13 : " Thy seed shall be a stranger in 
a land not theirs and shall serve them ; and they shall 
afflict them 400 years " : — which is quoted substan- 
tially by Stephen, Ac. 7 : 6. On the other hand stands 

Gal. 3 : 17, which makes the giving of the law on Sinai 
430 years after the covenant made with Abraham. The 
interval from that covenant to Jacob's standing before 
Pharaoh is readily computed thus : From the covenant 
with Abram, he being then 75 years old (Gen. 12 : 4) to 
the birth of Isaac, Abraham 100 years old (Gen. 21 : 5) 

is 25 years. From birth of Isaac to birth of Jacob 

(Gen. 25 : 26) 60. Jacob standing before Pharaoh 

(Gen. 47: 9) at 130, the sum of which numbers is 215. 
According to Paul, this would leave for the sojourn in 
Egypt but 215 years. 

A distinct class of proofs came from an estimate of 
the generations between the fathers who went down 
into Egypt and the sons who entered Canaan. Of this, 
presently. 

Reverting now to the obviously conflicting proof 
texts above cited, we may note that Ex. 12: 40 is read 
variously — the Septuagint (Vatican text) adding after 
" dwelt in Egypt," the words — "and in the land of 
Canaan;" while the Alexandrian text of the Sep- 
tuagint adds also — "they and their fathers." Both 
these additions appear also in the Samaritan text and 
in the Targum Jonathan; while the Masoretic Hebrew 
is supported by the more reliable Targum of Onkelos; 






SOJOURN IN EGYPT. 63 

also by the Syriac and the Vulgate. These additions as 
in the Septuagint are clumsily made. The dwelling in 
Canaan, referring to Abraham and Isaac, should come 
in before the dwelling in Egypt if at all, and not after. 
The diversity between the two texts of the Septuagint 
is suspicious. The authority of the old Hebrew text 
stands unshaken. 

The passage Gen 15: 13 is strong to the same pur- 
port, since it was "in a land not his own" (i. e. not 
Canaan), and was a state of tyrannous oppression 
which was to continue 400 years — points which forbid 
us to include in this 400 years the life-history of Abra- 
ham, Isaac and Jacob. As to Paul (Gal. 3 : 17) his 

readers had before them only the Septuagint ; he would 
therefore naturally follow its authority, and the more 
readily because the difference between that and the 
Hebrew in the length of the interval was a point of no 
importance to his argument. 

The evidence from the lapse of generations during 
the sojourn in Egypt is of great, not to say decisive, im- 
portance to our question. Here, however, opinions as 
to its bearing differ totally. One of the test passages is 
Ex. 6: 16-20, which makes the whole age of Levi 137 
years ; of Kohath, his son, 133 ; of Amram — apparently 
his son and the father of Moses, 137. The age of Moses 
when he stood before Pharaoh (Ex. 7 : 7) was 80. Ko- 
hath was born in Canaan ; his father was older by sev- 
eral years than Benjamin; presumably, therefore, his 
children were older; yet Benjamin had ten sons when 
he went down into Egypt (Gen. 46 : 21). If we suppose 
that Kohath was 25 when he went into Egypt, then he 
lived there 108 years. Amram lived there 137, and 
Moses at the Exodus had lived 80. With these given 
generations and ages, this computation is stretched to 
its utmost extent since it supposes Kohath's death at 
133 and Amram's birth to have occurred in the same 
year; also Amram's death at 137 and the birth of Moses 
to be in the same year; yet the sum is only 325, which 
is less by 105 years than the long period. With these 
data the short period (215) might be readily provided 
for. 

But several circumstances combine to show that there 
must be several omitted links between the Amram 



64 HEBREW CHRONOLOGY. 

here spoken of, and Kohath. For in this genealogical 
list (Ex. 6: 16-20) we have but two names between 
Levi, the tribe-father, and Moses, viz. Kohath and Am- 
ram. But between Joseph, a younger tribe-father, and 
Zelophehad, a contemporary of Moses, there are four in- 
tervening names (Num. 26: 28-33) ; between Judah and 
Bezaleel there are six (1 Chron. 2 : 3-5, 18-20) ; between 
Joseph (through Ephraim) and Joshua, there are nine 

(1 Chron. 7: 22-27). Again, we have in Num. 3: 27, 

28, a census of the four Kohath families. The males, 
from one month and upward, are 8600. If we set off 
one-fourth of these to Amram (i. e. 2150) and remember 
that the Amram who was father to Moses had but one 
other son, Aaron, (known to this genealogy) with four 
sons, and that Moses had but two, we shall see it ut- 
terly impossible that the male offspring of Moses and of 
Aaron could number 2150. Therefore Amram, the im- 
mediate son of Kohath, must have been several genera- 
tions back of the Amram who was father of Moses. 

The genealogy of Jochebed, the mother of Moses, might 
also be explained, but space forbids. The vast in- 
crease of Hebrew population, from the 70 souls who 
went down into Egypt to the 600,000 men of age for 
war who went out (Ex. 12: 37), suggests a longer time 
than 215 years. The evidence on the whole preponder- 
ates decisively against the shorter and in favor of the 
longer period, 430 years. 

The third doubtful period in Hebrew chronology lies 
between Abrahan^ and his father Terah, the question 
being the age of Terah at Abraham's birth. Some au- 
thorities make it 70 years; others, 130. The proof texts 
are — (a.) Gen. 11 : 26; " Terah lived 70 years and begat 

Abram, Nahor, and Haran."- (b.) Gen. 11: 32; "The 

days of Terah were 205 years ; and Terah died in 

Haran." (c.) Acts 7: 4; "Abram came out of the land 

of the Chaldeans and dwelt in Haran ; and from thence, 
after his father was dead, he removed into this land 

wherein ye now dwell." (d.) Gen. 12: 4; "Abram was 

75 years old when he departed out of Haran." The 

difficulty is that if Abram was born when his father 
was 70 and lived with him till his death at the age of 
205, he should have been 135 and not merely 75 when 
his father died and he went into Canaan. To sur- 



TERAH TO ABRAHAM. 65 

mount this difficulty some construe the text (a.) to 
mean that Terah lived 70 years before the birth of his 
first son ; that Abram was not his first-born but is 
named first on account of his greater prominence in 
history and in character ; and that Abram was not born 

till his father was 130. Others assume that Stephen 

made the slight mistake of supposing that Terah was 
dead when Abram left Haran for Canaan, misled by the 
circumstance that the historian, in order to dispose of 
his case, narrated Terah's death before he spoke of 
Abram's emigration to Canaan, although (as they as- 
sume) it in fact occurred 60 years afterwards. Others 

assume an error in the number of years assigned as the 
full age of Terah, making it 145 instead of 205 — the 
Samaritan text giving these figures. 

The assumption that Stephen was mistaken is to be 
rejected; partly because it was vital to the purposes of 
his speech that his historic points should be accurately 
made — at least in harmony with current Jewish opin- 
ion — to say nothing of the further fact that he is before 
us as one " filled with the Holy Ghost " and specially 
inspired ; partly because the history represents Terah 
as sympathizing fully in the spirit of the removal from 
Ur to Canaan, and apparently prevented from going 

only by the infirmities of age. The choice seems, 

therefore, to lie between the first named explanation 
and the last. The first — making the passage (Gen. 11 : 
26) mean only that Terah lived 70 years before the birth 
of his eldest, but became the father of three sons — leav- 
ing us at liberty to fix Abraham's birth at his 130th 
year — is a possible construction, but is rendered some- 
what improbable by Abram's question (Gen. 17: 17) 
" Shall a son be born to him that is 100 years old " ? 
How could he have thought this strange if in fact he 

himself had been born when his father was 130? 

There may be an error in the number of years of Terah's 
life; the Samaritan text maybe right in making it 145. 
This is below the average age of his fathers; but in 
those as in all other days, men were subject to die before 
they reached the maximum age of their generation. 
It would seem that he set out from Ur with the reason- 
able expectation of going to Canaan. Hence a proba- 
bility that he died unexpectedly, and at an earlier age 



66 HEBREW CHRONOLOGY. 

than his fathers. I can express no positive opinion 
upon this case. 

Two other doubtful periods remain to be considered, 
viz. The interval from the creation to the flood: and the 
interval from the flood to the call of Abram. The question 
upon these two intervals is substantially the same, so 
that they may properly be presented together. It 
hinges in both cases upon the authority of the texts — 
viz. for the former interval, Gen. 5 : 3-32 ; and for the 

latter, Gen. 11 : 10-26. In form these tables are not 

chronological but genealogical. They do not reckon from 
any given era, as if (e. g.) to show the interval from the 
creation to the flood, but give the age of each member 
of the genealogical line when his son of the same line 
was born. It is therefore by adding together these 
measured portions of each man's life, viz. the years he 
lived before the next member in the line was born, that 

we obtain the entire interval. The tables give three 

facts as to each man's life ; (a.) how old he was when 
his son in this line was born; (b.) how long he lived 
afterwards ; and (c.) the sum total of his years. If the 
chain is perfect, with neither missing nor supernumer- 
ary links, and if the numbers of the first class are all 
correct, the result must be reliable. But plainly the 
result will be changed at once by changing the first set 
of numbers and the second to correspond, — without 
changing the third at all. 

In the present case from Adam to Noah inclusive are 
ten generations. The sum of the first class of numbers 
as it stands in our Hebrew text is 1656, to the year of 
the flood. The only question of difficulty is upon the 
authority of the text The Septuagint makes the same 
interval 2262 — an excess above the Hebrew of 606 years. 

In like manner from the birth of Arphaxad to the 

call of Abram (ten generations inclusive) the Hebrew 
text makes a total of 365 years ; the Septuagint 1015, 
or by another text of the Sept. 1115, making an 
excess of 650 or 750 years. The sum of excess 
in the two periods is 1256 or 1356. The follow- 
ing tables will serve to show how these diverse foot- 
ings are produced. The numbers given by Josephus 
have some interest : I therefore place them in the table 
for the period before the flood. The numbers given in 



CREATION TO THE FLOOD. 



67 



the Samaritan text are frequently brought into this 
comparison. They differ considerably from either of 
the other authorities, but seem to me of no particular 
value, and are therefore omitted. 



NAMES 



1. Adam 

2. Seth 

3. Enos 

4. Cainan 

5. Mahalaleel.... 

6. Jared 

7. Enoch 

8. Methusaleh... 

9. Lamech 

10. Noah 

To the flood., 



HEBREW TEXT. 



Total 1656 



130 

105 

90 

70 

65 

162 

65 

187 

182 

500 

100 



800 
807 
815 
840 
830 
800 
300 
782 
595 
450 



930 
912 
905 
910 

895 
962 
365 

969 
777 
950 



SEPTUAGINT. 



230 
205 
190 
170 
165 
162 
165 
*187 
188 
500 
100 



2262 



700 
707 
715 
740 
730 
800 
200 
782 
565 
450 



930 
912 
905 
910 
895 
962 
365 
969 
753 
950 



JOSEPHUS. 



230 
205 
190 
170 
165 
162 
165 
187 
182 
500 
100 



2256 



M 



700 
707 
715 
740 
730 
800 
200 
782 
595 
450 



930 
912 
905 
910 
895 
962 
365 
969 
777 
950 



* The Vatican text of the Seventy makes this number 167. 

Comparing the Hebrew figures with those of the Sep- 
tuagint, it seems plain that one set or the other has 
been altered by design. It should be borne in mind that 
the Septuagint is a translation from Hebrew into Greek, 
made about 285 B. C, which is not far from 1500 years 
prior to the date of our oldest Hebrew manuscripts. 
Also that Josephus wrote in the latter part of the first 
century after Christ, giving Jewish history quite faith- 
fully as then understood. In the first table Josephus 

sustains the Septuagint with only the one slight ex- 
ception of making Lamech 182 instead of 188 at the 
birth of Noah — his total being thereby six years less. 

The reader will note carefully how these main differ- 
ences between the Hebrew and the Septuagint stand. 
In the first five names and in the seventh, the years in 
the first column — i. e. the age of the father at the birth 
of his son, are less by 100 in the Hebrew than in the 
Septuagint, or (what amounts to the same thing) greater 



68 



HEBREW CHRONOLOGY. 



by 100 in the Septuagint than in the Hebrew. To cor- 
respond, the years in the second column are greater by 
100 in the Hebrew than in the Septuagint, so that the 
totals as they appear in the third column come out the 

same in both texts. These are the only important 

variations. The other is a slight one — the Septuagint 
adding six years to the age of Lamech at Noah's birth, 
or the Hebrew taking six years off from the number as 
in the Septuagint. In this case Josephus is with the 

Hebrew text. It may be noted also that in the cases 

of Jared and Methuselah, the figures agree. Now the 

question is — Which text is pure, and which has been cor- 
rupted f 

A better view perhaps of the whole question will be 
obtained if at this point we study the corresponding 
table for the period from the birth of Arphaxad (two 
years after the flood) to the call of Abram, made up 
from the Hebrew text, from the Septuagint and from 
the Samaritan text of Gen. 11 : 10-26: 



B. 



NAMES 



1. Shem 

2. Arphaxad 

3. Salah 

4. Eber 

5. Peleg 

6. Eeu 

7. Serug 

8. Nahor 

9.Terah 

10. Abram, his call 
Total 



HEBREW TEXT, 



4 

<5 



100 
35 
30 
34 
30 
32 
30 
29 

130 

[or 70] 

75 



365 



500 
403 
403 
430 
209 
207 
200 
119 

135 



600 
438 
433 
464 
239 
239 
230 
148 

205 



SEPTUAGINT. SAMARITAN 



be 30 



100 
135 
130 
134 
130 
132 
130 
179 

[or 79] 

130 

[or 70] 

75 



1015 



500 
400 
330 
270 
209 
207 
200 
125 

135 



600 
535 
460 
404 
339 
339 
330 
304 

205 



100 
135 
130 
134 
130 
132 
130 
79 

70 

75 



1015 



m 



500 
303 
303 
270 
109 
107 
100 
69 

75 



600 
438 
433 
404 
239 
237 
230 
148 

145 



Here it will be noticed that the important differences 
are of the same sort as in the corresponding table before 



AUTHORITY OF THE SEPTUAGINT. 69 

the flood. In a series of six names (Arphaxad to Serug 
inclusive) the Hebrew has 100 years less in each life 
than the Septuagint before the dividing point. In the 
first (the important) column, the Samaritan agrees with 
the Septuagint. The years in the second and in the 
third columns are quite irregular. In the case of Nahor 
the Septuagint exceeds the Hebrew either 50, as in the 
Alexandrian text of the Septuagint, or 150 as in the 
Vatican text. 

On the question — Which of these texts, the Hebrew 
or the Greek, has been corrupted ? it may be said in 
favor of the integrity of the Hebrew : 

(a.) That it is the original. (b.) That in general 

it has been preserved by the Jews with extreme care 
and guarded against corruption with the greatest vig- 
ilance. 

In favor of the integrity of the Septuagint on the 
points now in question may be urged — 

(a.) As to the period from Adam to Noah, the gen- 
eral concurrence of Josephus — an independent and reli- 
able witness as to the state of all the Jewish authorities 
of his time. In regard to the period after the flood, 
the corresponding concurrence of the Samaritan text in 
all vital points. 

(b.) The fact that there is no known reason for in- 
tentional corruption; while over against this it has 
been supposed (with how much probability it is diffi- 
cult to say) that the Jews during their controversies 
with the Christians on the great question of the Messiah 
(A. D. 150-400) found it for their interest to shorten 
the period from the creation to the Christian era in 
order to prove that the Messiah had not yet come. 
This presupposes it admitted on both sides that he was 
to come within some given number of years after the 
creation — perhaps 4500 or 5000. We have already 
seen reason to suppose that the Hebrew text of 1 Kings 
6 : 1 is in error — perhaps corrupted. It is manifestly 
less than the truth by the difference between 480 
and 591. 

(c.) The accuracy of the Septuagint chronology on 
these contested points does not appear to have been 
called in question until at least 400 years after the 
translation was made — never before A. D. 150, about the 



70 HEBREW CHRONOLOGY. 

date when the controversy arose respecting the Chris- 
tian Messiah. 

(d.) It was in use and fully accredited before the 
Christian era. 

(e.) It was used and its authority fully admitted by 

the fathers of the Christian church. This fact and 

the next preceding render it at least probable that the 
Hebrew text at that time was in harmony with the Sep- 
tuagint. 

(f.) The Chaldean and Egyptian annals seem to de- 
mand more time back to the flood or to the creation 
than the present Hebrew text admits, and therefore 
lend their influence (to be taken for what it is worth) 
in favor of the Septuagint rather than the Hebrew be- 
cause of its longer periods. 

(g.) In table A it will be readily seen, comparing the 
figures of the first column in the Hebrew with the cor- 
responding figures in the Septuagint, that the latter 
are very uniform while in the Hebrew there is a wide 
diversity between the highest and the lowest, four 
standing considerably below 100 and two above 180. 
The probability seems to be somewhat against so wide 

diversity. In table B the Hebrew figures in the first 

column are sufficiently near each other. Out of seven 
in succession the extremes are 29 and 35. We have an 
equal uniformity in the first column of the Septuagint 
and of the Samaritan, six of these figures being the same 
as in the Hebrew with only the addition of 100. The 
Hebrew figures seem low relatively to the total years ; 
and on the other hand the Septuagint figures seem too 
high. Especially is this objection formidable when we 
remember Abram's surprise that God should promise 
him a son when 100 years old (Gen. 17: 17). " Shall a 
child be born to him that is 100 years old?" — as if it 
were a thing unknown in then recent history. But if 
all Abram's ancestors back to the flood begat their 
respective sons in this line at ages ranging from 135 to 
130 (or all but Terah) it is somewhat difficult to ac- 
count for his surprise. The best we could say would be 
that the average human life was fast lessening. I re- 
gard this as the most serious objection of internal char- 
acter against the integrity of the Septuagint text. 

On the whole the chronological questions at issue be- 
tween the Hebrew text and the Septuagint, turning 



usher's system too short. 71 

upon the authority of their respective texts, are very 
much complicated and not a little doubtful. I have 
laid before the reader what I regard as the main argu- 
ments, and rest the case here, hopeful that greater light 
may yet arise, leaning, however, toward accepting the 
authority of the Septuagint. 

Reviewing the points made in this examination of 
Hebrew "chronology, it will be seen that we extend the 
time beyond Usher's system, (a.) In the period of the 
Judges at least 111 years; (b.) In the sojourn in Egypt 
215 years ; and (omitting the interval between Terah 
and Abram as uncertain), (c.) In the interval from the 
flood to the call of Abram (if the Septuagint be fol- 
lowed) at least 650 years, and perhaps 750 ; and (d.) In 
the period from the creation to the flood, 606 years — a 

total of 1582 or 1682 years. Or, to put the case in 

another form, we put the Exodus in the year (B. C.) 
1603; Jacob's going into Egypt, B. C. 2033; the call of 
Abram, B. C. 2248 ; and by the Septuagint the flood, 
3265 or 3365; and finally, by the Septuagint, the crea- 
tion, B. C. 5527 or 5627. 

This approximates toward harmony with the re- 
ported results of the Indian chronology which locates 
the creation B. C. 6174 ; also the Baylonian, B. C. 6158, 
and the Chinese, B. C. 6157 — the excess of the latter 
above the longest sacred chronology being only 530 
years. The approach toward harmony in these three 
not sacred chronologies — the Indian, the Baylonian 
and the Chinese — the extreme difference being only 17 
years — is certainly a remarkable fact. 



CHAPTER IV. 



THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN KESUMED. 

As to the antiquity of Egyptian art, civilization and 
political power, there are two main questions : 

1. How much time, after Noah, is required? 

2. How much can be allowed in harmony with the most re- 
liable authorities of Hebrew chronology ? 

1. Under the head of time required, it is in place to 
note the circumstances which favored the very rapid 
growth of Egyptian civilization and also of the numer- 
ical and political power of Egypt. 

(a.) Mizraim, the father of Egypt, who gave his name 
to the kingdom, was a grandson of Noali and the father 
of seven sons (Gen. 10 : 1, 6, 13, 14). Consequently he 
Started early and strong. 

(b.) The fertility of the Nile valley was prodigious; 
it was capable, therefore, of sustaining an immense 
population, and so would attract other people besides 
the lineal descendants of Mizraim. Every thing was 
propitious for the early and rapid peopling of their 
country. 

(c.) Fixed residence, coupled with cheap bread and 
abundance of it, put the Egyptian on vantage-ground 
above any other ancient nation for the early culture of 
art and for rapid growth in all that made Egypt great. 

(d.) It is a capital mistake to assume that the arts 
and sciences were originated in Egypt after the flood, 
and that therefore a very long time must be allowed for 
their growth and development up from utter barbar- 
ism. For there was surely no insignificant amount of 
art and science among the builders of Noah's ark. The 
yet earlier history of the race names " the father of all 
such as handle the harp and organ," and also " an in- 
structor of every artificer in brass and iron " (Gen. 4 : 
21, 22). 

(e.) It is a significant fact that the Chaldean tradi- 
tion of the deluge as preserved by Berosus sets forth the 
special care taken by Noah to preserve and transmit to 
(72) 



AGE OF EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. 73 

the new-born nations after the flood the arts and sci- 
ences which had been developed before that catastro- 
phe. They say he was admonished to put in writing 
an account of these arts and sciences and deposit it in a 
place of safety until the flood should be past. This tra- 
dition reveals the fact of a current belief that there was 
such knowledge to be preserved, and that means were 
used to preserve it. 

2. Under the head of time required it remains to give a 
synopsis of the latest and most reliable results of Egyp- 
tologists in regard to the Egyptian date of Menes, their 
first king, and of the building of the three great pyra- 
mids — these being the most important epochs of the 
earliest Egyptian antiquity. 

The standard historic authority (not, however, above 
suspicion) is Manetho, an Egyptian priest of Heliopolis, 
of the age of Ptolemy Philadelphus (reigned B. C. 284- 
246), who is supposed to have made up from the ancient 
records of his nation a list of thirty or thirty-one dy- 
nasties of Egyptian kings, beginning w T ith Menes and 
ending with the conquests of Alexander the Great, 
giving the years of each king's reign. Unfortunately it 
comes down in a somewhat fragmentary condition, as 
copied by Julius Africanus (died A. D. 232), who was 
himself in part copied by Eusebius (of the fourth cen- 
tury) and by Syncellus (flourished A. D. 780). 

Until recently it has been the current opinion of the 
best authorities (still held by many) that these dynas- 
ties were at some points contemporary and not successive — 
some of them reigning in Upper Egypt, others in Mid- 
dle or Lower Egypt, at the same time. This would raise 
the problems — How many and which were contempo- 
rary? How much is the entire period actually short- 
ened by this contemporaneousness ? Moreover it has 

been supposed also that on the same throne there has been 
at some points a joint occupancy of two or more kings — 
father and son perhaps, or of some rival claimants ; so 
that the entire duration of a given dynasty may be less 
than the sum of the reigns of its enumerated kings. * 

* It is a telling fact that according to Julius Africanus, Manetho's 
numbers for the entire reigns of all the kings foot up 5404 years, 
while the aggregate duration of all the dynasties (within the same 
chronological termini) is 3555 years — i. e. the sum of all the dy- 
nasties is less by 1849 years than the sum of all the kings' reigns 



74 ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 

The problem of whole duration being complicated by 
these elements of uncertainty, it has been the great 
aim of recent investigation to gather in all possible aid 
from the monuments and bring their testimony to bear 
upon the tables of Manetho. The results are variously 
estimated and the problem can not be regarded as yet 
fully settled. 

I place together the opinions of some of the best au- 
thorities : 

I. For the date of Menes, reputed the first king. 

B.C. 

Bunsen's latest revised recension of Egyptian Chro- 
nology locates him* 3059 

J. P. Thompson at least as far back as 3000 

R. S. Poole (Smith's Bible Dictionary, p. 682) 2717 

Sir Gardner Wilkinson (see "Aids to Faith," p. 294).2690 
Wm. Palmer (Smith's Bible Dictionary, p. 687) . . . .2224 
The "Old Chronicle" (very valuable authority) .. .2220 
Eratosthenes and Appollodorus, original author- 
ities, in no respect inferior to Manetho 2793 

Other estimates from less reliable authorities carry 
him back yet further. 

For convenience of comparison we place here our cor- 
rected Bible Chronology for the call of Abraham — viz. 
B. C. 2248; and for the flood, by the longest Septuagint 
text, B. C. 3425, and by the shortest, B. C. 3325. These 
dates afford ample time for Mizraim, grandson of Noah, 
to make a home and found a community in Egypt, in 
which Menes might presently reach the dignity of 
being the first king. 

II. The date of the Pyramids. 

B.C. 

Bunsen in his latest recension, about 2600 

Prof. C. Piazzi Smith, by astronomical calculations.2170 
George Rawlinson (in "Aids to Faith," p. 297) . . . .2400 

These dates may be compared with the call of Abra- 

which make up those dynasties. See Burgess on the Antiquity of 
Man, pp. 70, 73. 

* Bunsen is cited not as the best authority, but as one of the 
most strenuous for an exceedingly, not to say excessively, long 
duration. 



UNITY OF THE RACE. 



75 



ham— B. C. 2248. J. P. Thompson (Genesis and Ge- 
ology, p. 86) says — " The three great pyramids by the 
common consent of Egyptologers are assigned to the 
fourth dynasty of kings of the old empire, as given by 
Manetho." 

It will be seen that these dates for Menes, the first 
king, and for the oldest pyramids are amply provided 
for within the extension of sacred chronology as above 

indicated. Other points in Egyptian antiquities 

will be treated of in their place. 

On the general subject of the antiquity of man, it only 
remains to touch briefly the subsidiary questions stated 
above, p. 49. 

(a.) Were there one or more races of primeval men, pre- 
Adamic, but now extinct ? 

So far as reliable facts have yet come to light there is 
no sufficient evidence of the affirmative. Our investi- 
gations into the antiquity of man do not seem to de- 
mand a longer time than the extended sacred chronol- 
ogy above presented affords. It is perhaps too soon to 
say that no evidence w T ill yet appear of a pre-Adamic 
race not in existence now. But it w T ill be soon enough 
to recognize the fact when the evidence shall have been 
adduced. Till then, it is more scientific to believe only 
so far as we have knowledge based on evidence. 

(b.) Have titer e been various head-centers of existing human 

species, or only one, and that Adam? Or (the same 

question in different form) Are all the living varieties 
of race lineally descended from Adam? and all from 

Noah? These questions contemplate the well known 

diversities of race in the existing human family. 

The classification of race is made somewhat variously 
by different authors ; but the more common one makes 
five classes : The Caucasian, or white ; The Mongolian, or 
yellow ; The Ethiopian negro race, or black ; The Amer- 
ican, or red; and the Malayan, or brown. (See Webster.) 

Let it be premised in the outset that this distinction 
of race is one of variety and not of species. It sits 
upon the surface and does not penetrate to the inner 
nature. All these races have the same anatomical 
structure ; the same physical organs ; and what is 
far more, the same intellectual and moral nature. Ev- 
ery-where they exhibit the common effects of the fall of 



76 ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 

Adam ; the same depravity of moral nature ; the same com- 
mon need of redemption by Christ. These are cardinal 

traits and tests. What is the color of the skin compared 

with the stamp of God's image upon the very nature itself? 

That these races intermingle and cross indefinitely is 

sufficient proof that they are only varieties, and by no 

means distinct species. Yet this of itself does not 

prove that all men have descended from one first man — 
Adam. For the Lord had power to create five or ten 
Adams, each the head-center of as many distinct races, 
yet all, of the one species, man. So far therefore 
as respects the creative power of God or the constitution 
of man, this is an open question : What then are the facts? 

1. The Scriptures imply with the strongest form of 
implication that the Adam of Genesis is the father — the 
one only father — of the whole human race. The narrative 
of the creation ; of the fall ; and of the first promise of re- 
demption — all imply this. Paul implies it in those pas- 
sages in which he compares the ruin of the race through 
the one man Adam with the salvation provided for the 
race through the greater second Man, Jesus Christ. The 
strong passages are Rom. 5 : 12-19 and 1 Cor. 15 : 21, 22. 

2. The diversities of race may be accounted for as pro- 
duced by either or both of two causes ; (a.) Climatic influ- 
ences; (b.) Sporadic, abnormal peculiarities, appearing 
suddenly, and perpetuating themselves by inheritance. 

3. The geographical distribution of the race from one 
head-center, Adam, is certainly possible. There is some 
reason to suppose that the relative position of the seas, 
oceans, and continents at their points of nearest approach 
may have been different in the earlier ages from the pres- 
ent. 

4. The proofs of a common language from which all 
known human languages have been derived conspire to 
sustain the common origin of all the human family. 

This list of proofs might be extended and the argu- 
ment from these points greatly expanded. 

On the subordinate question whether Noah was the 
common ancestor of all the races living since his day, 
the answer turns mainly on the point of the universal- 
ity of the deluge ; or rather, on this precise point — Did 
the deluge destroy all the living men except those 
saved with Noah in the ark? 

This question will be considered in its place. 



CHAPTER V. 



THE SABBATH. 

It has been already suggested that the division of the 
creative work into six days rather than into five or ten 
or any other number, contemplated the weekly Sabbath 
and was designed to connect this Sabbath for man with 
God's rest from this creative work so that the Sabbath 
should be at once a memorial of the creation and should 
bear in itself the force of God's example in his relative 
periods of labor and of rest. God created this beautiful 
earth for man's abode, and man to dwell upon it ; there- 
fore let man remember his Great Creator and Father, 
thoughtfully contemplating his works, admiring and 
adoring, worshiping and serving the Glorious Author 
of both his being and his blessings. God wrought six 
days and rested one ; so let man throughout all the ages 
of earthly time. Such is the relation of the Sabbath 
to God and to man. Note therefore 

1. God ordained and enjoined it. It is precisely a 
divine institution — not man-made but heaven-born ; 
an outgrowth of God's wisdom and love for his offspring 
man— for that one of all his creatures whom only God 
"made in his own image." "God blessed the seventh 
day and sanctified it ; because that in it he had rested 
from all his work which God created and made " (Gen. 
2: 3). "Blessed and sanctified" — not as to himself 
but as to man ; i. e. not to make the day a blessing to 
himself but a blessing to man; not to make the day 
holy to himself but holy as to man. It was a day for man 
to keep holy and a day laden with blessings for man on 
condition of his sacredly observing it in its true spirit 
and intent. In accord with this view are our Sav- 
ior's words (Mk. 2 : 27), " The Sabbath was made for 
man " — to become a blessing for man, one of the great 
and sure channels of mercy from the Great Father to 
his obedient children. Thus the Sabbath was insti- 
tuted for man when the race existed in Adam and Eve 
alone — one of the institutions revealed from God and 

(77) 



78 THE SABBATH. 

enjoined in Eden — good for man before his fall, and 
surely not less needful to the race fallen than to the 
race sinless. Let it be distinctly considered that this 
Sabbath was instituted with no limitations of time or 
race or nation — not for Eden alone ; not for the race be- 
fore their fall only — to become defunct when man began 
to sin ; not for the Jews alone to be only a Jewish na- 
tional observance and to become obsolete when the cere- 
monials of Judaism " waxed old and vanished away." 
It was indeed prescribed anew to the Hebrew nation 
and enforced with new sanctions, especially by his ob- 
ligations to his covenant-keeping God for national 
deliverance from Egyptian bondage; but this weighs 
not a feather against the doctrine that the Sabbath was 
made for man. While the Sabbath obligation, thus 
heightened by new mercies, might be said to become 
more sacred and obligatory upon the Jewish nation, 
this fact could by no means make the day less sacred to 
the Gentiles of every land and of all time. 

2. As sustaining scripturally this argument for the 
divine appointment of the Sabbath for the race of man- 
kind, let it be noted that the seven-day division of time 
is unquestionably traceable to this primeval institu- 
tion. It did not originate in the revolution of the earth 
on its axis which makes the common day, nor in its 
revolution in its orbit round the sun which makes the 
year, nor in the changes of the moon which mark off 
lunar months. It is an abnormal — we might say un- 
natural division of time — one which comes not of nature 
but from a source above nature — from God directly and 
from God alone. 

Historically we find this seventh-day period in ex- 
istence during the flood. Noah observed it and sent out 
the raven and the dove after seven-day intervals of 

time. It becomes most distinctly apparent in the 

recorded history of the manna (Ex. 16: 22-30). By 
the natural law of the manna, each next day's supply 
was distilled each night upon the adjacent grounds, 
ready for the labor of gathering it in the early morning. 
This would normally make labor a necessity for their 
subsistence every day, leaving them no Sabbath. There- 
fore God arrested the normal law at the Sabbath point 
and provided a double supply on the morning next pre- 
ceding, giving none on the morning of the Sabbath. 



AS OLD AS EDEN. 79 

Moreover by another special provision, this double sup- 
ply was kept two days from putrefaction — in this case 
only, so that it sufficed perfectly for their wants till the 
Sabbath was past. Some of the people, oblivious of the 
Sabbath, " went out on the seventh day to gather, and' 
found none. And the Lord said unto Moses, How long 
refuse ye to keep my commandments and my laws? 
See, for that the Lord hath given you the Sabbath, 
therefore he giveth you on the sixth day the bread of 
two days; abide ye every man in his place; let no man 
go out of his place on the seventh day " (Ex. 16 : 27-30). 
Most decisively therefore does this narrative assume 
that the Sabbath was not then a new institution but 
an old one. This scene and these words, be it remem- 
bered, were before (not after) the giving of the ten 
commandments from Sinai. 

To the same purport is the form of the fourth com- 
mandment; "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it 
holy." The Lord does not say — I now introduce a new 
and special precept. His words, " Kemember " etc. do 
not imply this but imply the very opposite of this. So 
also do the reasons assigned; viz. God's creative work 
finished in six days with rest on the seventh. If this 
were a reason for the Sabbath, it was certainly good for 
Adam in Eden and for all of Adam's children to the end 
of the world. Corresponding to this we may note that 
in this fourth command God does not say — I appoint 
each seventh day for a sign between me and thee and 
a memorial of your national deliverance from Egyptian 
bondage (as many have maintained — to make out that 
the Sabbath was nothing but a Jewish institution) but 
this is not the form in which the Sabbath stands in the 
immortal decalogue. These points — a " sign " between 
the Lord and Israel and a memorial of deliverance from 
Egypt, came in fitly afterwards as a supplement — an 
appendix to this fourth command in its special relations 
to the children of Israel. See Ex. 31 : 12-17 and Ezek. 
20 : 12, 20, with my Notes on the passage in Ezekiel. 
But these special and superadded relations of the Sab- 
bath to the Hebrews can not possibly in reason dimin- 
ish the obligation of the original Sabbath ordained for 
man as a race in Eden. 

4. To complete the argument for a perpetual Sabbath, 
it is only needful to add that our Lord re-endorsed it 



80 MADE FOR MAN. 

and gave it the whole weight of his sanction for all 
future time ; and in these several ways : (a.) By re-en- 
dorsing the entire decalogue — " I am not come to de- 
stroy the law but to fulfill " (Mat. 5 : 17). The scope 
of the sermon on the mount — (of which these words are 
a part) proves that his eye was on the great moral law 
of ten commandments. Plainly he could not have 
spoken of the Mosaic ceremonial law, and therefore 
must have spoken of that special code of precepts of 

which the Sabbath was the fourth. (b.) He endorsed 

the Sabbath as perpetual and universal by solemnly 
declaring — " The Sabbath was made for man " (Mk. 2 : 
27). (c.) Also by affirming it to be his own prerog- 
ative to enforce the Sabbath and to set forth its spirit 
and expound its obligations. " Therefore," because the 
Sabbath was made for man, for all men of all time, 
" therefore, the Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath" 
(Mk. 2 : 28). It was in order to relieve the law of the 
Sabbath (as then currently expounded) from burden- 
some, excessive and injurious constructions which hu- 
man nature could not bear and which were alien from 
its true spirit, that our Lord confronted the traditions 
of the Scribes and Pharisees and sought to place this 

great institution upon its true and eternal basis. 

(d.) Finally as showing historically that our Lord had 
never a thought of terminating the obligation of the 
Sabbath at his death but designed its obligation to be 
perpetual, we have this very incidental word — "Pray 
ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the 
Sabbath day" (Mat. 24 : 20). When the Roman armies 
should bring down the judgments of the Almighty upon 
the doomed city of the murderers of Jesus, his followers 
must flee to the mountains across the Jordan; yet let it 
be their prayer that they might not be compelled to flee 
either in the severity of winter's cold, nor on the holy 
Sabbath. Flight for life might be morally admissible 
even on this sacred day ; yet it would be most appro- 
priate to pray that God would spare them this moral 
trial and not subject them to the necessity of labor on 

this holy day. In these various ways our Lord most 

fully and undeniably re-endorsed the Sabbath as for all 
time. 



CHAPTER VI. 



THE EVENTS OF EDEN. 



The first human pair have their first earthly want 
met by their Maker in a home — a quiet, beautiful spot 
(precisely where we know not, but near the source of the 
great Euphrates) in which trees of beauty for the eye 
and of nutritious fruitage for subsistence supplied some 
pleasing occupation for the mind and wholesome labor 
for the hand; where, happy in each other's love and 
blessed with the freest communion with their Maker, 
not a thing was lacking to fill their cup of joy. If it 
might only last — and for this, nothing more was need- 
ful save that their moral nature should be cultured, 
their faith and love and obedience strengthened up to 
the point of being thoroughly, fully confirmed : then 
their lot would have been most blessed. As a requisite 
means for such culture, God subjected their faith and 
obedience to one gentle test — to one point of moral trial. 
To have endured this successfully would have made 
them morally stronger and have drawn them yet nearer 
in love and trust to their Great Father; but to fall 
before it — Ah ! this is the experience of human life, but 
too well known in its fruits of sin and woe ! 

The history of these scenes is before us in this third 
chapter of Genesis. Our leading inquiries may fitly 
take the following order : 

I. Is this description symbolic or historic; L e. sym- 
bolic of all human sinning ; or historic as to this first 
sin, its antecedents and immediate consequents ? 

II. The moral trial; 

III. The temptation; 

IV. The fall; 

V. The first promise ; 

VI. The curse, being the first installment of the great 
penalty upon transgression. 

I. The preliminary question as to the character of 
this record demands a brief notice. In my view it is 
not to be taken as a symbolic representation of the uni- 

(81) 



82 EVENTS OF EDEN. 

versal fact that the race yield to temptation and fall 
before it, but as a historical account of the first human 
sin — including the person of the tempter and his meth- 
ods ; the working of his temptations upon Eve and then 
upon Adam ; and the first group of immediate results. 

Under this construction of the narrative, I find 

here a real serpent, and a real, not a merely symbolical, 
Satan — the serpent supplying the external guise, the 
sense-medium ; but Satan, the intelligent mind, the 
malign purpose. The narrative seems to indicate that 
Satan chose the serpent for his service because of his 
well known subtlety. It is of small account to push 
our conjectures on this point beyond what is written 
(here and elsewhere) ; but it is supposable that the 
serpent was Satan's fittest instrument as being less 
likely to excite surprise by his uttered words. 

That this record speaks of a real serpent and of a 
personal devil I am constrained to believe, because, 

1. This is the obvious sense of the narrative — is the 
construction which the mass of readers most naturally 
put upon it, supposing them to be unsophisticated, 
holding their minds in harmony with the simplicity of 
the Scripture narrative and so in a mood to take most 
readily 'its obvious sense. 

2. This construction is implied and thereby endorsed 
in subsequent scriptures : e. g. Isaiah (65 : 25) having 
said — " The wolf and the lamb shall feed together " — 
peace and love supplanting violence and cruelty — adds, 
" And dust shall be the serpent's meat " — with manifest 
reference to this primal curse on Satan's special agent. 
See also a similar reference in Solomon's Messianic 
Psalm (72: 9): "His enemies shall lick the dust." 

Also Micah 7 : 17. These allusions presuppose a real 

serpent in the scenes of Eden. 

That the real personal devil was there, the responsi- 
ble agent, is surely implied by our Lord (Jno. 8 : 44) : 
" Ye are of your father the devil ; he was a murderer from 
the beginning and abode not in the truth because there is 
no truth in him." So also John (1 Jno. 3: 8): "He 
that committeth sin is of the devil, for the devil sinneth 
from the beginning," i. e. ever since that first great sin 
in tempting our common mother. " For this purpose 
was the Son of God manifested that he might destroy 
the works of the devil " — according to that first prom- 



IS THE NARRATIVE HISTORIC? 83 

ise — "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, 
between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy 
head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." Paul inci- 
dentally gives his construction of this narrative : " The 
God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly" 
(Rom. 16 : 20) ; and our Lord also in Luke (10: 18, 19) : 
" I beheld Satan fall as lightning from heaven ; and I 
will give you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, 
and over all the power of the enemy." In 2 Cor. 11 : 3, 
Paul gives us a plain, historic version of this narra- 
tive — "But I fear lest by any means, as the serpent be- 
guiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should 

be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ." 

But Satan is perhaps most sharply identified in the 
descriptive points made by John (Rev. 12 : 9 and 20 : 2) : 
"And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, 
called the devil and Satan, who deceiveth the whole 

world." "And he laid hold on the dragon, that old 

serpent who is the devil and Satan, and bound him a 
thousand years." Our Lord, as also Paul and John, saw in 
this narrative a real Satan and also the veritable 
serpent, made his instrument. 

3. That Satan should use such an instrument is man- 
ifestly within and not beyond his power. It has in cer- 
tain points its analogy in the demoniacal possessions 
recorded by the Evangelists. As to power he is spoken 
of as the god and prince of this world, " the prince of the 
power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the 
children of disobedience." 

The Scriptures attribute to holy angels great power 
over material agencies ; and with scarcely less fullness to 
Satan and his legions also. In the case of demoniacal 
possessions, nothing can be more obvious than the man- 
ifestations of Satanic mind, mind speaking through hu- 
man lips indeed, yet giving utterance to Satanic 
thought. "We know thee who Thou art." "What 
have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? Art 
thou come to torment us before the time " ? (Mat. 8 : 29 
and Mk. 5 : 7 and Luke 8 : 28. See also Acts 19 : 15.) 

4. Other points in this narrative are recognized in 
the Scriptures as historic and not merelv symbolic. 
Paul wrote to Timothy (1 Tim. 2 : 13-15) : " For Adam 
was first formed, then Eve, and Adam was not deceived; 
but the woman being deceived, was in the transgres- 



84 EVENTS OF EDEN. 

sion. Notwithstanding, she shall be saved in child- 
bearing," etc. — all referring very definitely to this nar- 
rative as fact and not merely drapery illustrating some 

universal truth. To the same purport is Paul in 

Eom. 5 : 12, 19 : "As by one man sin entered into the 
world and death by sin." "As by one man's disobedi- 
ence many were made sinners," etc. So also 1 Cor. 15 : 
21, 22. 

5. The sin of the first pair stands . in its appropriate 
historic place here (not a merely symbolic place), being 
immediately connected with the curse upon the serpent 
(and under him upon the devil) ; upon the woman also, 
and the man and the ground ; also with the expulsion 
from Eden and man's changed life, from the ease and 
the delights of Eden to sweating labor upon a stubborn 

soil, in perpetual conflict with noxious growths. 

These considerations suffice in my view to prove that 
this narrative must be taken as simple history, and not 
as symbolic drapery employed to set forth, not these 
specific events, but only the general truth of human de- 
pravity. 

II. The Moral Trial 

Provision was made for this trial by one simple pro- 
hibition, forbidding to them the fruit of one tree in the 
midst of the garden. Of all else they might eat as they 
pleased. All they could need for subsistence or enjoy- 
ment was freely permitted them ; but the fruit of this 
one tree they might not eat on pain of death. This 
was the test of their obedience. This was to discipline 
their faith and their love toward their divine Father. 
There the tree stood before their eyes in the midst of 
the garden — every sight of it suggesting their Great 
Father's word — not to be eaten at all on penalty of 
death. Will they cheerfully and even joyfully deny 
themselves so much for the love they bear their Father? 
So long it shall be well with them. Every time they 
put down the temptation to eat of it they will become 
stronger in their spirit of obedience and more happy in 
God. It was a means of continual culture in holiness, 
ever leading onward and upward into deeper com- 
munion with God and more assured and joyous sub- 
mission to his will, more strength of purpose in obedi- 
ence, more delight in whatever self-denial obedience 



THE MORAL TRIAL. 85 

might involve. Surely it is not too much to say that 
they might make this means of moral culture a price- 
less blessing to their souls. How could paradise meet 
the greatest of all their wants — the want of their new- 
born souls — without this one provision for proving 
and invigorating their loving obedience to their God? 

Need we then raise the question — What was God's pur- 
pose in this prohibition f The answer is at hand — To ac- 
complish precisely this result ; to give the first human 
pair a test of obedience which should be naturally a 

means of moral culture and of growth in holiness. 

The horrible thought — that God meant and sought to 
make them sin — how can we say less of it than that it is 
born of Satan! For it assumes, as Satan did in the 
garden, that God sought, not their good, but their hurt; 
is not benevolent but malevolent! Our souls recoil 
from this assumption. Doth not the Scriptures say 
truly (Jas. 1: 13), " Neither tempteth he any man 7 '? 

Never, for the purpose of drawing him into sin ! Is 

it replied: — God certainly knew they would eat that 
forbidden fruit ; the answer is, Undoubtedly he did ; but 
this proves nothing as to his purpose and aim in 
placing them under this moral trial. If it be yet said — 
He might have made the trial so much less that they 
would have borne it successfully : the proper answer is, 
Who knows that ? Who is wiser or more loving in 

such an emergency than God? Consider also that 

while God knew they would fall, he also knew that he 
could redeem the race through his Son, gloriously; and 
so could make the wrath of both wicked men and dev- 
ils subserve his praise. We may account this to be his 
reason for subjecting the first pair to a form of trial 
(every way good and wise in itself and well designed) — 
although he foresaw they would fall before it. It was 
still (as he saw the case through to its remotest end) 
better than any other form of trial ; better than no trial 
at all, supposing such a thing in their case possible. 

Thus may we vindicate God's ways in this transac- 
tion. It was kind in him to grant for their free use 
every other fruit in the garden — all they could need. 
It was right that he should impose some test of their 
obedience and love. Indeed it was a natural necessity 
of their moral nature that this question of obeying God, 
always and every-where, should come to issue. As 



86 EVENTS OP EDEN. 

surely as they were moral beings, capable of knowing 
duty and of doing it, born into being with susceptibil- 
ities to happiness which sometimes must be virtuously 
denied at the demand of God and of the greater good, so 
surely they must meet this trial sooner or later, in one 
form or another, until they become so strong in their 
holy purpose, so fixed in the spirit of love and obedience 
to God that temptation to sin is of course spurned away 
and duty is done for evermore without a question. 
Moral trial, therefore, if not in this precise form, yet in 
some analogous form, is the necessary means of devel- 
oping moral strength and confirmed holiness ; is there- 
fore the natural pathway to the blessedness of heaven. 
Thus, with no wavering of doubt, we may vindicate 
God's ways toward man in this first great moral trial 
brought on our race. 

In what sense was this called, " The tree of the knowl- 
edge of good and evil"? (Gen. 2: 9, 17 and 3: 5) It 

brought the knowledge of evil by fearful experience ; 
the knowledge of good to a certain extent by the fresh- 
ened sense of contrast with the experience of evil. Sin 
gives to moral beings such knowledge of good and of 
evil — knowledge it were better far for them they should 
never have! 

Was the fruit of this tree a natural poison ? We do not 
know. God has not told us. It may have been or it 
may not. God does not base his prohibition on this 
ground. There are other grounds, all-sufficient, without 
this. It might perhaps be urged with some plausibil- 
ity that the analogy of this earthly life favors the affirm- 
ative inasmuch as for the most part, God's prohibitions 
of food and indeed of animal indulgence in general, are 
based on this principle — Abstain from poison ; do thy- 
self no harm. God is not wont to prohibit aught that 
is good for food or pleasurable to any sense, except 
because it is pernicious, poisonous. 

What was this threatened penalty ? Death, in what 
sense ? 

In the same sense in which it actually falls upon all 
who reject Christ and fail of his salvation. Upon such 
the curse of the law falls without abatement or modifi- 
cation. Their doom must surely be taken as the expo- 
nent and measure of the meaning of this threatened 
death. Of course it includes the loss of God's favor; 



THE TEMPTATION. 87 

the incurring of his frown. That eternal death did 

not begin instantly was due to arrest of judgment for a 
new probation under the scheme of redemption; and 
to nothing else. 

Was natural death a part of this penalty? Plainly- 
natural death became the doom of the race, equally of 
the redeemed and of the unredeemed, under the scheme 
of redemption — a scheme which carried with it more or 
less of earthly life before the death of the body. But 
this proves nothing as to the breadth of the original 
threatening — "Thou shalt surely die." What would 
have been in respect to natural death if no scheme of 
redemption had intervened and the original threatening 
had been executed at once, we have no means of know- 
ing. Mortality as at present resting on the race and 
terminating in natural death is one of the incidents of 
the new probation under mercy, and gives us no light 
on the other question, viz. What if no mercy had come 
in ? In general, it is of small account for us to ask, 
What would have been if something else had happened 
otherwise than it did? e. g. What would have taken 
place if the first pair had endured all temptation? 
How long would the trial have continued? Would it 
have terminated by removing the tree, or by taking off 
the prohibition, or only by such complete victory over 
temptation that its presence could have been only a joy 

and a triumph ? What part would have been borne 

by " the tree of life " ? And after their sin, what if 
they had put forth their hand to take and eat of this 

life-tree ? Speculations of this sort never make men 

wiser. 

III. The Temptation. 

On this point the history is remarkably full and dis- 
tinct. To those who have given attention to what may 
be called the law of temptation — the way it works and 
gains its object — little explanation of the narrative is 

needed. We may note that Satan took care not to be 

recognized as an enemy; that he made his first ap- 
proaches with subtlest caution and skill, bringing up 
the case of the prohibited fruit as a question — Is it in- 
deed so that God hath said, Ye shall not eat of every 
tree ? As if he would say — What do you think about 
this prohibition ? Is it quite pleasant to be put under 
5 



88 EVENTS OF EDEN. 

such restraint ? When Eve recited the words of God's 

prohibition and added something more — viz. " neither 
shall ye touch it," it is at least supposable that Satan 
had already sprung in her mind the feeling that the 
injunction was indeed very stringent, perhaps unrea- 
sonably and unkindly so. It is plain that Satan is em- 
boldened and now ventures to strike out squarely against 
God. Putting his word unqualifiedly against God's 
word, " ye shall not surely die," he became " the father 
of lies," " a liar from the beginning," and threw all the 
weight of his influence into the scale to break down 
Eve's confidence in God's veracity as well as in his real 
kindness. Then with Satanic cunning he took advan- 
tage of the name given to this forbidden tree to make 
Eve think that knowledge, great and enviable like that 
of the gods, would come from eating this fruit. Artfully 
he charges that God knew this, and sought by the pro- 
hibition to debar them from this boon of knowledge so 
desirable. The gilded bait was swallowed but too soon 
and too thoughtlessly ! Eve had listened ; she had more 
than half believed these lies ; she still dallied with the 
temptation ; she looked again at the tree and its fruit ; 
she saw it beautiful and seemingly good for food ; and, 
far beyond this, it appealed to her imagination as giv- 
ing her that unknown wisdom, like the wisdom of the 

gods — so she took of it and ate! -Then she brought 

of it to her husband. Her words to him are not on 
record. We are left to imagine how her example may 
have wrought upon him, and sympathy also with her 
doom if Adam thought of that ; how the feeling — I must 
stand or fall, live or die, with this only human friend I 
have on earth — may have overcome every scruple. So 
far as appears he yielded without a word of question, 
much less of reproof. He yielded — and the awful deed 
was done I 

IV. The Fall and its Immediate Effects. 

The first human pair are in sin ; they have risen 
against God their Maker in rebellion. Instantly "their 
eyes are opened." They realize how strangely differ- 
ent are the sensations that come after sin from those 
that are before. The false hopes, the fascinations, the 
bewildering, bewitching charms of temptation's hour 
give place to the awful sense of folly and of wrong — a 



THE CURSE AND THE PROMISE. 89 

sense of passing suddenly into a world of solemn and 
dread realities pertaining to God, duty, and doom. 
" They knew that they were naked " ; an awful sense 
of being unfit to be seen; a consciousness of being ugly, 
loathsome, as if the inner guilt of their souls stood out 
visibly over their whole bodies — this seems to have been 
their first sensation, and they set themselves to sewing 
fig-leaf coverings. As evening drew on they heard the 
voice of the Lord God •walking in the garden. That 
voice which up to this day had been their sweetest 
music now fills their very souls with shame and terror. 

It is remarkable that Adam's words and his acts 

also make so much account of his nakedness, apparently 
of person. Was it that his convictions of sin and guilt 
were yet superficial, so that his sense of shame for his 
sin turned his thought first to his personal nakedness ? 
Had he yet to learn that "God looketh on the heart " ? 
If so the Lord's searching question must have met his 
case — " Who told thee that thou wast naked"? How 
earnest thou by this sense of shame, this dread of the 
eye of thy divine Father? "Hast thou eaten of the 
tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not 

eat " ? Adam could not do otherwise than confess 

his sin, yet with an apology which almost or quite re- 
flected upon God ; " The woman whom thou gavest to be 
with me, she gave me, and I did eat." The woman too 
sought to screen herself somewhat under the apology 
of a subtle temptation. " The serpent beguiled me and 
I did eat." 

The secondary results of the fall appear in the curse 
severally pronounced of God upon the serpent, upon the 

woman, and upon the ground for his sake. As to the 

serpent, since he stands before us in this entire transac- 
tion as a double character, so the curse upon him comes 
in a sort of double meaning. The most obvious sense 
of the passage assigns a measure of this curse to the 
literal serpent — the animal under the guise of whom 
Satan beguiled his victim. But the responsibility and 
guilt being upon the very Satan, this curse falls chiefly 
on him. He is degraded, doomed to eternal shame; 
and in his great conflict against God and goodness, to 
disgrace, defeat and damning ruin. Words of telling 
significance were these ; — " I will put enmity between 
thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her 



90 EVENTS OF EDEN. 

seed ; it shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his 
heel." The serpent guilefully assumed to be your 
friend. I tear off his mask and expose him in his true 
nature ; I ordain eternal enmity between serpent and 
woman, and pre-eminently between the serpent's seed — 
the children of the devil — and the great, distinguished 
Personage known as "the seed of the woman." This 
enmity underlies the mighty conflict of the ages — 
Christ and Satan each leading on his host to battle 
and no peace or even truce arresting hostilities till the 
victory of the King of Kings shall be complete and in- 
effably glorious. Thus the first relation between ser- 
pent and woman — that of assumed but treacherous 
friendship — develops into everlasting enmity — God, her 
real friend, becoming in the person of his incarnate 
Son, born of woman — her champion and the mighty 
antagonist of Satan and all his offspring. Here and 
thus mercy breaks in upon this scene of sin and ruin, 
and God begins the wonderful process of making the 
wrath of Satan the occasion of his own infinite 

glory. The words which put so tersely the result of 

this great conflict take their shape and borrow their 
drapery from the guise under which Satan here ap- 
pears — that of the crawling serpent. He shall wound 
the heel of his opponent — the natural place for the ser- 
pent's bite ; but his own head bruised and crushed, shall 

end the fight. This first promise of God to our fallen 

race sweeps the eye over the whole vast field of moral 
conflict between Christ and Satan, and testifies of glori- 
ous victory over Satan as the sublime result. It was 
inexpressibly kind in the Lord to bring in these 
gleams of light and hope upon the trembling souls of 
the first sinning pair before he proceeded to speak of 
the specific forms of suffering that must righteously 
come upon them and their offspring as the testimony 
of God's displeasure against sin. Having said this, he 
proceeds to the curse upon woman — sorrow in the birth 
of offspring ; and the curse upon man — toil and struggle 
for subsistence on a soil prolific in noxious growths and 
demanding labor as a condition of fruitfulness. 

Yet let the minor points of this scene sink into the 
shade in the presence of the sublime glory of the great 
first promise. In the light of this we see that though 
Satan plotted the ruin of the race, yet God counter- 



THE FIRST PROMISE. 91 

plotted the ruin of Satan and the salvation of the masses 
of mankind. When it might have seemed that all was 
lost, it proved that this extremity was God's great op- 
portunity, for his strong arm w r as made bare for help 
and real victory. This is the birth-hour of most mo- 
mentous issues. Sin came in upon Eden and upon 
earth ; and many a bitter sorrow, many a cup of suffer- 
ing and woe, must needs follow in its train; but Re- 
demption comes in also; it enters upon its co-ordinate 
work to save the soul from sin and from eternal death 
and to bring in everlasting righteousness. The history 
of our world in its most vital aspects is foreshadowed 
here in this first short meeting of their Maker with this 
sinning pair. The spoken recorded words were few, 
but their significance was momentous; the sweep of 
their bearing, the issues of the divine policy here indi- 
cated, were destined to fill up the ages of time with 
stirring and strange conflict, and to send their influ- 
ence down through the endless ages of man's being and 
of God's kingdom. 



CHAPTER VII. 



FEOM THE FALL TO THE FLOOD. 

1. Notes on special passages. 

In Gen 4: 1 our English version stands — "I have 
gotten a man from the Lord." Some critics construe 
these words of Eve to mean — By the help or bless- 
ing of the Lord; but the more direct and obvious 
sense of the original is this : " I have gotten a man, 
the Lord " — as if she assumed that this, her first-born 
son, was really the promised divine " seed of the wo- 
man " who was to bruise the serpent's head. The cur- 
rent objection to this construction is that it is too far in 
advance of Eve's theology : — to which however the ob- 
vious reply is — Who knows how far advanced Eve's 
theology may have been? Her imagination may have 
outrun the actual revelation at that point made. All 
we can, say is that these words are recorded as indi- 
cating her thought, and that this is the most natural 
sense of her words. 

In the Lord's expostulation with Cain (4 : 6, 7) 
we read: "If thou doest well, shalt thou not be ac- 
cepted?" but better— Would there not be an eleva- 
tion — i. e. of countenance, a cheerful looking up, instead 
of that fallen, sullen look spoken of in the previous 

verse. "And if thou doest not well, sin lies crouching 

at the door" — sin being personified and thought of as 
some animal, perhaps the serpent, ready to allure him 
on to deeper, more damning crime : "And its (not his) 
desire is toward thee" — its Satanic purpose is to en- 
snare and ruin thee : "but thou shouldst rule over it" — 
in the sense of mastering its temptations, commanding 
them down and ruling them out from thine heart. 

The speech or rather song of Lamech to his two wives 
(4 : 23, 24) must be assumed to have a close connection 
with the occupation and skill of Tubal-Cain, "a work- 
man in brass and iron." Consciously strong and boldly 
overbearing in view of this new invention and pro- 
duction of death-weapons, he proudly sings : " I have 
(92) 



abel's offering. 93 

slain (or could slay) a man for wounding me — a young 
man — for any hurt inflicted upon me ; and " (there be- 
ing in this case some real provocation ; Cain had none) 
"if Cain would be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech 
seventy and seven." The lenity shown to Cain was 
bringing forth its fruits; the invention of improved 
death-weapons was also contributing to fill the earth 

with bloody violence. These little facts indicate the 

state of society which culminated in so filling the earth 
with violence that God was compelled to wash out its 
blood-stains and its degenerate race with the flood. 

2. Abel's offering, and the origin of sacrifices. 

Abel kept sheep; Cain tilled the ground. "In proc- 
ess of time " (Heb. " at the end of days ") — the stated 
time for worshiping God with offerings — Cain " brought 
of the fruit of the ground " — an unbloody offering : Abel 
"brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat." 
The reference to their " fat " proves that these animals, 

lambs of the fold, were slain in sacrifice. The record 

informs us that God looked with favor upon Abel's 
offering, but not upon Cain's. It does not concern us 
to know how God signified his approval of Abel's sacri- 
fice, whether by fire from heaven consuming it, or oth- 
erwise; but it does concern us to ascertain if we can 
why he approved it. 

We have some rays of light on this point from the 
writer to the Hebrews who says: u By faith Abel offered 
unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which 
he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testify- 
ing of his gifts." Now the simplest idea of faith, the 
one element always present in it, is boiving to God's author- 
ity with implicit confidence in his word. But in this case 
bowing to God's authority implies that God had given 
some word in reference to bloody sacrifices — the offering 
of a lamb by shedding its blood upon the altar. And if 
God had given any such word of command, it is cer- 
tainly to be presumed that he had also given at least 
this general idea, that the blood of the innocent lamb 
took, in some sense, the place of the blood of the guilty 
offerer, so that the sacrifice would imply the confession 
of guilt, and also faith in a bloody substitute of the 
Lord's own providing. Prosecuting our investiga- 
tions we find this broad fact of history bearing on the 



94 FROM THE FALL TO THE FLOOD. 

case, viz. that Noah, Abraham and Isaac built altars 
wherever they were sojourning and offered bloody sac- 
rifices thereon. Further, God directed Noah to preserve 
in the ark clean animals by sevens, but animals not 
clean only in pairs— two of a species — a fact which can 
not be reasonably accounted for save with reference to 
their customary use in sacrifice. We have then before 
us the well-established fact of the early custom of bloody 
animal sacrifices. 

How came this custom into existence ? 

It did not originate with men — certainly not with 
good men. Apart from divine suggestion, they could 
not have supposed that the slaughter of an innocent 
animal would be pleasing to God. The presumption 
would be utterly against this. They could not have 
thought out the divine idea of atonement for sin by the 
death of Christ, God's own incarnate Son : the very sup- 
position is absurd, for it supposes that men were able 
to sound the infinite depths of God's wisdom and of his 
love, and to grasp the relations and bearings of his vast 
moral government with a reach of thought, not human 
but divine. Yet further; it is not supposable that, 
having' excogitated and discovered the grand idea of 
atonement, they could have devised the plan of prefig- 
uring this atonement by the bloody sacrifice of the most 

innocent, harmless and lovely of the animal races. 

And further, if they could have thought out this mira- 
cle of God's wisdom and love — both the divine idea of 
atonement, and the expediency of illustrating it for 
ages by a foreshadowing system of bloody sacrifices — it 
would still have been the height of presumption in 
them to have started this system of sacrifices without 
God's special and sanctioning appointment. 

We are therefore shut up to this alternative : Either 
the whole system of altars and bloody sacrifices, as prac- 
ticed by Abel, Noah, Abraham and Isaac, was an un- 
meaning farce — a thing of no significance, a mere 
amusement or fancy, meaning nothing and good for 
nothing; or, God himself originated the system and en- 
joined it, and these good men were observing it in obe- 
dience to special revelation from God. Here it will 

be readily seen that the first side of this alternative is 
perfectly precluded by the fact that God approved their 



MORAL LESSONS OF THIS AGE. 95 

sacrifices. God " had respect to the offering of Abel." 
He " smelled a sweet savor " in the sacrifices offered by 
Noah (Gen. 8: 20, 21.) The other alternative there- 
fore, viz. that bloody sacrifices originated in a direct 
revelation from God — is the only supposition left us. 
We must adopt it. 

It can not be necessary to draw out an argument to 
prove that in instituting this system of bloody sacri- 
fices God gave his people some notion of its significance. 
The whole record shows that he was on most familiar 
terms with them and therefore can not be supposed to 
have left a point of so much importance utterly blank. 
It is not too much to say that unless some light were 
thrown by the Lord himself upon the meaning and pur- 
pose of these bloody offerings, the command to make 
them would require some apology ; for apart from their 
expiatory significance, they are most revolting to even 
human benevolence — most foreign to all just notions of 
what is due treatment of innocent lambs, bullocks and 
doves from our hand. It should also be considered that 
their moral value depends on their significance. All 
these bloody sacrifices must have been practically value- 
less unless their expiatory significance was in some 
good degree understood. That God ordained them for 
the sake of their moral value, who can for a moment 

doubt? The conclusion, therefore, seems inevitable 

that God not only enjoined these bloody sacrifices, but 
gave his people to understand in general their sig- 
nificance to the extent of fulfilling that unconscious 
prophecy of Abraham (Gen. 22 : 8) : "My son, God will 
provide for himself a lamb for a burnt-offering." 

These views, if just, are of vast historic value as 
showing how much God taught his people at that earliest 
day, pertaining to his great thoughts of redemption for 
a lost race. 

3. The great moral lessons of the antediluvian age. 

(1.) It may be regarded as God's experiment of a very 
long life-probation for man. Of course this experiment 
is not to be thought of as made to satisfy himself as to 
its wisdom, but to satisfy created finite minds in this 
and in every other world. In a case where issues so 
momentous were pending on the results, it must be 
vital to the honor of Jehovah before all created minds 



96 FROM THE FALL TO THE FLOOD. 

that he should fix the average period of human proba- 
tion in this earthly life at the best possible point. If 
he had begun with the same average limit which has 
obtained since the days of Moses (three-score years and 
ten), he must have anticipated the general impression 
that this is much too short for the decision of destinies so 
vast as the welfare of an immortal existence. It was 
therefore eminently wise that God should begin (as we 
see that he did) with a much longer, even a tenfold 
longer average life-period. This very long life, more- 
over, carried with it an extraordinary physical vigor, 
apparently a very great exemption from sickness, 
frailty, suffering, save as induced by the violent and 
murderous passions of man toward his fellows. The 
discipline of suffering seems to have been at its min- 
imum for all human history. The experiment of al- 
most unimpaired physical well-being was afforded the 
freest scope for its manifestation. 

What was the result? The words of Solomon ex- 
press it well : " Because vengeance against an evil work 
is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons 
of men is fully set in them to do evil" (Eccl. 8: 11). 
The mass of those generations sunk down morally to 
the lowest point possible, short of a general and promis- 
cuous destruction. "All flesh had corrupted its way." 
"Every imagination of the thought of man's heart was 
only evil continually." " The earth was filled with vi- 
olence." Human life had no sacredness ; society, no safe- 
guard; murderous passions, no restraint. The race were 
fast becoming too corrupt to live. If the Lord had not 
swept them by a flood, the earth would fain have opened 
her jaws to swallow them from the face of the sun. 

(2.) This social and moral degeneracy becomes a very 
instructive lesson for all time upon the results of the 
non-punishment of murder. It was doubtless wise for 
God to begin as he did with Cain ; but it was not wise 
to continue that policy after such results had been 
brought out before both this world and the whole in- 
telligent universe. What men socially related must 
needs do for their mutual protection in order not merely 
to make society a blessing but to make the existence of 
men in society a possibility, was precisely the problem 
to be solved; and to its solution this first period of 
human life — the antediluvian age — was definitely 






MORAL LESSONS OF THIS AGE. 97 

adapted. It brought out the solution perfectly. No 
other experiment can ever be necessary. When the 
race started anew after the flood/the Lord advanced to 
the true doctrine and enjoined on social man the sol- 
emn duty of shielding human life by taking the mur- 
derer's blood. " Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man 
shall his blood be shed" (Gen. 9: 6). This was one 
step of manifest progress in the revelation of God's will 
as to the responsibility and duty of men in their social 
and governmental relations. It was progress in the 
origination of society — progress built on the great les- 
sons of human history. 

(3.) Here are also lessons of faith and of heroic virtue 
in the godly lives of the small and it would seem con- 
stantly diminishing group of pious men living among 
the multitudes of the ungodly. Here was Enoch, " the 
seventh from Adam," who preached a righteous God 
and a coming judgment to a hardened generation, but 
seems to have met with only resistance, to the extent 
apparently of relentless persecution. The remark of 
the apostle (Heb. 11 : 5) — " He was not found because 
God had translated him," may perhaps imply that his 
enemies sought him for purposes of bloody violence, 
from which the Lord took him away in his chariot of 

fire by translation to heaven ! Here too was Noah, 

also " a preacher of righteousness," who " walked with 
God " — and was warned by him of the impending del- 
uge of waters. He warned his fellow men of their 
threatened doom, but warned them only in vain. 
" They ate, they drank ; they bought, they sold ; " they 
revelled and scoffed — till the day that Noah entered 

into the ark — no longer ! But we speak now of the 

example of Noah's faith in God. He saw no portents 
in the sky ; heard no muttering thunders in the distant 
heavens ; yet he held on year after year till the ark was 
ready — himself preaching and warning; fearlessly and 
heroically witnessing by his labors upon the ark to his 
positive faith in the forewarnings of God. Thus his 
faith rebuked the godless unbelief of his generation, and 
testifies to us of the, wisdom and blessedness of taking 
God at his word and of adjusting our life to his com- 
mand, though in the face of a scoffing world. 

(4.) Yet another point in this cluster of great moral 
lessons is indicated for us by Peter (2 Pet. 2 : 4-9) ; 



98 FROM THE FALL TO THE FLOOD. 

" For if God spared not the old world, but saved Noah, 
the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bring- 
ing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly : — the 
Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of tempta- 
tion and to preserve the unjust unto the day of judg- 
ment to be punished." That awful word, retribution, 
gathers into itself the fearful significance of these stu- 
pendous events. They are God's foregoing judgments, 
brought out in this world to foreshadow the sorer visit- 
ations of that coming day when God shall bring every 
work into judgment with every secret thing, good or 
evil. God surely does take note of the sins of men, how 
long soever he may stay his uplifted hand and delay to 
smite. If wicked men were wise they would believe God's 
words of warning, and take care not to live over again 
the life of that doomed generation and meet a final 
judgment more awful even than theirs ! 

(5.) Let us not fail to notice those wonderful and 
beautiful ways of God with his children, coming down 
in such condescending and most familiar communion, 
talking with them apparently almost as man talks 
with his dearest friend; and this not in Paradise only 
before the fall, but after the fall scarcely less ; and on- 
ward as the narrative indicates in the case of Enoch 
and of Noah. What more could he have done to reveal 
a personal God to mortals ? Surely the God who thus 
revealed himself in the fresh morning of our race is no 
dim abstraction, no impersonal Nature or Essence, dif- 
fused and diffusible throughout space, the ideal soul of 
all matter. This effort to dispose of a God with whom 
it is man's privilege to walk in positive personal com- 
munion, but who also takes cognizance of man's in- 
iquity, and to transmute him into an empty, forceless 
ideality, finds not the least countenance in these earli- 
est manifestations of himself to our race. Note how he 
dwells with men ; how he walks with them and lets 
them walk with him ! What is this but free and lov- 
ing communion? What less can it imply than just 
what the narrative of man's creation witnesseth, viz. 
that God "made manm his own image" — capable therefore 
of real and most intimate communion of spirit with *his 
Maker ? This lesson is written all the way through the Bi- 
ble. It stands out here with beautiful prominence in this 
first great chapter of God's revelation of himself to man. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



THE FLOOD. 



1. First, let us note its moral cause — the reason why 
God swept off the living from the face of the earth by 
a deluge of waters. It was essential to the moral re- 
sults which God sought that this reason should be 
given very definitely. So we find it given (Gen. 6: 
5-13) : " God saw that the wickedness of man was great 
in the earth, and that every imagination of the thought 
of his heart was only evil continually." "The earth 
was corrupt before God ; and the earth was filled with 
violence." These points are reiterated in most distinct 
and emphatic terms, showing that, outside of the house- 
hold of Noah, the whole living race had deeply aposta- 
tized from God and were boldly and even defiantly irre- 
ligious. Eliphaz in Job (22 : 15-17) gives the tradition 
current in his time, thus : " Who said unto God, ' Depart 
from us,' and, ' What can the Almighty do for them'" — 
i. e. for Noah and his godly associates? Despite the 
words of Noah who bore to them God's awful forewarn- 
ings and preached the righteousness of repentance, they 
pressed on in their sins unmoved and reckless — "till 
mercy reached its bound and turned to vengeance there " ! 
It was a whole generation hopelessly corrupt, daring 
the Almighty to make good his awful words of warn- 
ing ! The result is on record that all sinners of every 
age, tempted to like hardihood and defiance of God, may 
study it with profound consideration. 

2. The antecedent occasions of this deep apostasy from 
God as given in the narrative, next demand our atten- 
tion. They are 

(1.) The pious families intermarry with the godless. 

(2.) The Spirit of God, persistently resisted, is withdrawn. 
(1.) " The sons of God saw the daughters of men that 
they were fair, and they took them wives of all which 
they chose." The "sons of God" were his professed 
children of the godly race of Seth, Enos and Enoch. 
The " daughters of men " were of the Cainites, cultured 

(99) 



100 THE FLOOD. 

probably in music (Gen. 4: 21); attractive in person, 
fascinating in manners — but alas, all corrupt in heart 

as toward God ! The Jews have a tradition that these 

" sons of God " were fallen angels, once first-born sons 
of God, who by intermarriage with man's fair daughters, 
intensified this fearful corruption of the race. This 
tradition we must reject for the following as well as 
other reasons : 

(a.) Nothing is said here about angels. The record 
gives us no word which legitimately designates angels — 
least of all, the fallen angels. 

(b.) According to the Scriptures, angels "neither 
marry nor are given in marriage." The tradition is 
therefore not only without Scripture authority but against 
it. 

(c.) If this extreme demoralization had been caused 
by the marriage connection of fallen angels with the 
daughters of men, those angels should certainly have 
come in for their share of the visible retribution. God 
gave Satan his share of the curse for his agency in the 
first great sin. The same justice would have made the 
fallen angels visibly prominent under this curse of the 
flood. — —Either of these reasons singly would be suffi- 
cient ground for rejecting this tradition; much more 
must they suffice, combined. 

(2.) The withdrawal of the divine Spirit is the second 
assigned antecedent of this fatal degeneracy. In our 
English version we read— "And the Lord said, 'My 
Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also 
is flesh ; yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty 

years.'" As to the meaning of " My Spirit," we must 

reject the sense — animal life — that which God breathed 
into man to make him " a living soul " (Gen. 2 : 7), as 
being incongruous with the verb "strive": also the 
sense — rational soul — that which makes man a rational 
being ; and must accept the sense so amply sustained 
by Scripture usage — the divine Spirit, sent by Christ 

to transform human hearts. The word " strive " to 

translate the Hebrew verb * is not bad. We must re- 
ject the construction of some of the old versions, dwell, 
as not in the original, and as too tame : also the turn 
given it by Gesenius — to be humiliated, put down — 
as not borne out well by the original ; and say that the 



ITS MORAL CAUSE. 101 

verb is currently used of judicial transactions — search- 
ing out, convincing, convicting; and seems to have a 
striking analogy in that leading word given us by 
Christ ; " When he is come, he shall reprove the world " — 
enforce conviction upon the world — as to sin and right- 
eousness. 

The next clause is more difficult and perhaps more 
controverted : u For that he also is flesh." Why is the 
word " also " here ? And what is the logic indicated by 
"for that"? Can it mean that God withdraws his 
Spirit because man is human — with a body of " flesh" ? 
Our translators separated the main Hebrew word into 
three — the preposition meaning in, the relative written 
elliptically, and the particle meaning also. The con- 
struction of Fuerst is better — " In their wandering, he 
is flesh," i. e. their degeneracy has brought flesh com- 
pletely into the ascendant : warring against the spirit, 
the flesh is absolute victor in the fight. Henceforth 
all further conflict is hopeless. Hence God may right- 
eously say— nay must in honor to himself say — My 
Spirit shall not plead my cause in man forever. He 
is utterly gone over to the flesh, and nothing remains 
but that he must perish. One hundred and twenty 
years of merciful respite * for patient warning and ex- 
haustive trial must suffice : — then, if no penitence ap- 
pear, judgment must fall, and that without remedy ! 

Thus God places on record the moral causes and 
antecedents of this fearful visitation, that its moral les- 
sons may go down to distant ages for their admonition 
to the end of time. 

The hour of doom draws nigh. The Lord gave Noah 
definite notice to enter his ark (7:1) and allowed him 
seven days time (7 : 4) to gather in all whom the ark 
was provided to save. Then "the fountains of the 
great deep were broken up and the windows of heaven 
were opened." Of small avail for safety then was the 
gigantic frame of the giants of those days or the defiant 
heart of unbelieving scoffers ! 

It is scarcely needful to speak of the physical means 

*Or this one hundred and twenty years may be the reduced 
standard duration of human life, the thought being — So long a pro- 
bation, almost a thousand years, is too much ; my Spirit shall not 
prolong his effort in vain to this extent ; I reduce the average life- 
period to one hundred and twenty years. 



102 THE FLOOD. 

which God employed to produce this flood. The agen- 
cies which appear in the volcano and in the earth- 
quake and which God holds imprisoned at no great 
depth below the earth's surface, are all-sufficient for 
these results. We may suppose that they lifted the 
bed of the adjacent seas, upheaving their waters into 
the atmosphere to descend in torrents of rain, and sink- 
ing for the time the inhabited lands — and the work is 
done. Such alternate upheavals and depressions are, 
we may say, chronic to the crust of the earth. The 
ancient records of geology bear this testimony. It was 
not strange therefore but was merciful that God should 
allay human fears by his promise to drown the earth no 
more. His bow in the cloud, seen when the sun shone 
forth after the shower, became by God's special appoint- 
ment the sign and pledge of this covenant. 1 see no 

good reason to suppose that the rainbow never existed 
before. It must have existed by the laws of nature, 
unless those laws were greatly changed at the flood — a 
change which should not be assumed without suf- 
ficient reason. No such reasons are apparent. It is 
better therefore to construe the promise — The well 
known bow in the cloud I give and ordain to be my 
sign and pledge that the earth shall be deluged with 

water no more. Beautiful symbol, kindly and^lov- 

ingly ordained ; and as we look upon it, delighted with 
both its beauty and its significance, let it heighten our 
joy that God says of himself, " I will look upon it and 
remember my covenant." 

Was this flood universal ? 

1. Was it universal geographically ', overspreading the 
entire globe? 

2. Was it universal as to all living men, leaving abso- 
lutely none alive on the face of all the earth, except 
those in the ark ? 

1. That the deluge was of limited extent geograph- 
ically, and not universal, may be fairly assumed on the 
following grounds : 

(1.) The moral reasons for a deluge do not seem to 
require it to be universal, since obviously that corrupt 
generation whose sins demanded such a judgment did 
not overspread all the continents and lands of the 



FLOOD NOT UNIVERSAL. 103 

globe, but appear to have been confined within a quite 
limited area in Western Asia. 

(2.) While on the one hand we may not limit the 
miraculous power of the Almighty ; on the other hand, 
it is not legitimate to assume an expenditure of mirac- 
ulous power indefinitely beyond what the occasion de- 
mands. This objection is designed to apply, not 

specialty to the supply of water requisite to flood the 
whole earth at once, for there is w r ater enough in the 
oceans and seas to submerge the continents, provided 
only that the ocean beds be temporarily uplifted and 
the continents relatively depressed : but it does apply 
with great force to the preservation of the living ani- 
mals and plants of the whole world. The narrative as- 
sumes that the deluge will destroy the land animals 
and the fowls of the air unless they are protected in the 
ark. It also gives us the dimensions of the ark, and 
leaves us to estimate proximately how many could be 
saved alive in it. The narrative, therefore, does not 
authorize us to resort to miracle for the preservation of 

these animal races. Now it is entirely certain that 

only an exceedingly small part of all the land animals, 
insects and birds of the whole world were saved in the 
ark. Men versed in natural science estimate the living 
species of vertebrate animals at 21,000; of articulates, 
300,000 — numbers by far too great to be provided for 

in Noah's ark. Yet again : To a great extent the 

" fauna" (as they are called) — the animal species of the 
several continents — differ widely from each other. 
South America has its families, many of them unknown 
to other continents; Australia has its special group, 
and Africa its own. It is simply incredible that all or 
even the mass of these animals came to Noah and were 
preserved in the ark. If they had been destroyed by 
the flood, there should be traces of their sudden annihi- 
lation in the drift of that flood, and geological research 
might trace the introduction of new races by special 
creation to repeople those continents. No such line of 
proofs for a universal deluge is found. The absence of 
such traces of destruction and of new creation makes it 
far more than probable that the flood was limited in 
extent and not universal. 

Still further it is urged against a universal deluge — 
and for aught that appears conclusively — that volcanic 



104 THE FLOOD. 

cones exist — of Etna in Sicily and of Auvergne in 
Southern France — which, being composed of loose 
scoriae and ashes, must have been washed away by 
any deluge that should reach them. The cones of 
Etna are estimated to be 12,000 years old. 

^ (3.) The apparently universal language of the narra- 
tive may be readily explained as other similar language 
must be in the Scriptures, without assuming a range 
of meaning beyond the writer's personal knowledge. 
The writer of this narrative (Gen. chaps. 6-9) speaks 
as an eye-witness, especially of the great rain ; of the ark 
borne up upon the waters; of the surging back and 
forth of the billows, and of their covering " the high 
hills under the whole heaven," i. e. as far as the eye 
could reach. The same style of universal language ap- 
pears frequently in the Scriptures, yet subject to lim- 
itations from the known nature of the case; e. g. Deut. 
2 : 25 : " This day will I begin to put the fear of thee " 
[Israel] "upon the nations that are under the whole 
heaven;" Acts 2: 5 — "There were dwelling at Jerusa- 
lem, Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven" 
Mat. 3:5: " Then went out to him Jerusalem, and all 

Judea, and all the region round about Jordan." It is 

in point to notice also that the word " the earth" so fre- 
quently used in this narrative, very often has the 
sense — the land. It should manifestly have a meaning 
as broad when used of the extent of the judgment as 
when used of the extent of the sin, and not necessarily 
any more broad. Of the sin it is said repeatedly—-" The 
earth was corrupt before God;" "the earth was filled 
with violence." Obviously this same " earth," to the 
same geographical extent and not apparently any 
thing more, was destroyed by the flood. It may be no- 
ticed also that the word "ground" [Heb. adamah] is 
used (Gen. 7: 23) as a synonym for "earth" — "every 
living substance which was upon the face of the 
ground " — but this carries with it no sense of universal- 
ity as to this globe. 

There is every reason to suppose that at this time 
both the righteous descendants of Seth and the wicked 
descendants of Cain were living in the great basin of 
the Euphrates and the Tigris — with great probability 
not reaching out beyond the area bounded by the In- 
dian Ocean, the Persian Gulf, the Caspian, Black, Med- 



ITS TRADITIONS. 105 

iterranean and Eed Seas. This, therefore, we may as- 
sume to have been the area submerged by this deluge, 
and we have no occasion to look for its traces beyond 
these limits. 

2. Whether the deluge destroyed all living men from 
the face of the whole geographical earth except those 
in the ark, it is perhaps impossible to decide with ab- 
solute certainty. If any were not reached, they must 
have been such as had wandered early, far from their 
native home, suppose into China or Africa, where 
neither the corruption which became the moral cause 
of the deluge nor the deluge itself reached them. The 
question is one of probabilities only, for we have no 
certain knowledge on the subject and can not have. 
The probabilities are in my view quite against the 
supposition. 

Traditions of a Great Deluge, 

All the great nations of history have traditions more 
or less definite of a vast deluge in the days of their 
fathers. As should be expected, these traditions com- 
pared with the Bible record are variously modified, 
corrupt we might say, mixed with fable, magnified as 
great stories are wont to be in passing from lip to 
lip through many generations. In general those are 
most pure which are found nearest the locality of Eden 
and which were earliest committed to waiting. Some 
authors classify them into the West Asiatic, including 
the Babylonian, that of the Sibylline books, the Phryg- 
ian, the Armenian, and the Syrian, some of which are 
remarkably close to the truth. The East Asiatic, in- 
cluding the Persian, the Chinese, and the Indian ; the 
Grecian, found in Plato, Pindar, Apollodorus, Plutarch, 
Lucian and Ovid; and those of peoples and tribes outside of 
the old world — the Celts of Northern Europe, the Mex- 
icans, the Peruvians, the Indians of America and the 
tribes upon the Pacific Islands. Lange remarks that 
the ethical idea of the flood as a judgment upon men 
for their sins is every-where apparent. The Chaldean 
traditions, brought down in the writings of Berosus 
(wrote B. C. 260), are singularly minute and quite in 
harmony with the scriptural account in its main out- 
lines, some of which are as follows : 

Giving the name of Xisuthrus to the last of the prim- 



106 THE FLOOD. 

itive kings, it sets forth that he was warned of the 
flood in a dream ; was commanded to write down all the 
sciences and inventions of mankind and preserve them; 
to build a ship and save therein himself and his near 
friends, and take in also animals with suitable food. 
After the flood had somewhat subsided, he let fly a 
bird which came back ; a second which returned with 
slime on its foot ; a third which never returned. Then 
seeing land visible, he opened his vessel and came forth 
with his wife and children ; built an altar and offered 
sacrifice to the gods. They found the country to be 
Armenia. Portions of the ark were long in existence, 
sought for as amulets and charms. 

The Chinese story may be taken as a sample of those 
more remote from the locality of Noah. As given by 
the Jesuit, M. Martinius, the Chinese date this great 
flood B. C. 4000 ; say that Fah-he, the reputed author 
of Chinese civilization, escaped the flood, and together 
with his wife, three sons and three daughters, repeo- 
pled the renovated world. 

Dr. Gutzlaff communicated a paper to the Royal Asi- 
atic Society (as in their Journal xvi : 79) in which he 
stated that he saw in one of the Buddhist temples in 
beautiful stucco the scene where Kwanyin, the God- 
dess of Mercy, looks down from heaven upon the lonely 
Noah in his ark amidst the raging waves of the deluge, 
with the dolphins swimming around as his last means 
of safety and the dove with an olive-branch in his 
beak flying toward the vessel. Nothing could exceed 
the beauty of the execution.* 

Those which are found among the ancient people of 
the Western Continent — the Cherokees, Mexicans and 
Peruvians — have special interest as proving that, re- 
mote as these tribes were from the locality of Noah, 
they must have had a common origin and must have 
received this common tradition of the flood from the 
valley of the Euphrates. 

* See Smith's Bible Dictionary, " Noah," for numerous traditions 
of the flood. 



CHAPTER IX. 



FROM THE FLOOD TO THE CALL OF ABRAHAM. 

1. The law against murder and its death-penalty. 

When the waters of the great deluge had subsided 
and Noah and his family found themselves once more 
upon the face of the solid earth — an unpeopled soli- 
tude — that which we read in Gen. 9, was beautifully in 
place : — " And God blessed Noah and his sons" So long 
imprisoned in the ark ; so long in the presence of this 
fearful visitation of a righteous God upon a hopelessly 
corrupt generation, how naturally must their view of 
human life take on a somber hue, and how refreshing 
to be assured that the Great God was still their loving 
Father ! "God blessed them and said, 'Be fruitful and 
multiply and replenish the earth/ " — for God would have 
it filled again with living men. Moreover, though few 
and feeble, they need not fear the violence of the animal 
creation, for " the fear of you and the dread of you shall 
be upon every beast of the earth ; . . . into j^our hand 
are they delivered." Then by special provision, appar- 
ently never made before, God sanctioned the use of ani- 
mal flesh for human food. Yet lest this sanction should 
make them dangerously familiar with the shedding of 
blood, and tend to lesson the sacredness of human life, 
God solemnly forbade the use of blood for food, and then 
proceeded to ordain that human blood shed by ferocious 
animals should be avenged with their life. Then fol- 
lows special legislation against murder by guilty human 
hands: "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall 
his blood be shed, for in the image of God made he 
man." That this is precept and not merely proph- 
ecy is so apparent that argument in proof might seem 
almost an insult to the common understanding of man- 
kind. Yet the passage has been wrested in this way 
from its obvious significance. It should be construed 
in harmony with the scope of the context. Note there- 
fore, that its close connection with the use of animals 
for the food of man and with the "requiring " of human 

(107) 



108 THE PROPHECY OF NOAH. 

blood shed by the violence of beasts compel us to find 
here precept and not prediction. Still more does the 
historic place of this precept, standing upon the ruins 
of the old world and in the presence of the yet unwasted 
bones of thousands whose wickedness had culminated 
in such recklessness of human life that " the earth was 
filled with violence." In the presence of such gigantic 
iniquity, grown up under the experiment of pardoning 
and not punishing the crime of murder and giving un- 
restrained license to bloody passion, it was pertinent to 
lay a new and more effectual foundation for maintain- 
ing the peace of society and 'the sacredness of human 
life. The solemn lessons of the past required, not a 
prediction of retributive vengeance under the social law 
of self-preservation, but a divine precept demanding it 
and enforcing it with its logical reason — that "God 
made man in his own image." You may take the life 
of the lower animals for no higher cause than human 
sustenance — food for man's wants ; — but let no man put 
forth his hand against the blood of man, for he bears 

the very " image of God." To make this new law the 

more solemnly impressive, man must himself be the 
executioner of this divine behest — "By man shall his 
blood be'she&P Society itself must commit to some of its 
members this solemn function and they must take the 
murderer's life. Nothing less can shield the life of man 
from bloody violence; nothing less will duly honor 
God's image in man. 

2. The 'prophecy of Noah. 

In Gen. 9 : 25-27 we have the first of those patriarchal 
utterances of prophetic sort, in various strain — blessing 
and not blessing — of which several examples occur sub- 
sequently, as in the case of Jacob (Gen. 49 : 1-27); Moses 
(Deut. 33: 1-29). The form is thoroughly that of He- 
brew poetry — the brief parallelism of sentiment and lan- 
guage being the prominent feature. The circumstan- 
ces which called out these prophetic words are given 
briefly in the narrative. Noah having come forth from 
the ark soon commenced the culture of the vine and 
experimented (unfortunately) in the free use of its 
wine. While he lay overcome and personally exposed 
in his tent, his younger son Ham, lost to all sense of 
filial duty, reported the sad spectacle. Shem and Japh- 



BLESSINGS ON SHEM AND JAPHETH. 109 

eth, with filial pity and with the most delicate modesty, 
covered his shame. When Noah awoke to conscious- 
ness and came to know what his younger son had done 
unto him, he said, " Cursed be Canaan; a servant of 
servants shall he be to his brethren. Blessed be Jeho- 
vah, God of Shem, and let Canaan be servant to them. 
Let God enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents 

of Shem ; and let Canaan be servant to them." It 

had been previously said (v. 18), that "Ham was the 
father of Canaan." What part, if any, Canaan bore in 
this transaction, that the curse apparently due to Ham 
should fall so specially on him, the narrative does not 
say. The offense of Ham lay in the line of his rela- 
tion as a son. Perhaps it was for this reason that his 
punishment lay in the humiliation of his son. Be this 
as it may, the w r ords were prophetic of the future rela- 
tions of the posterity of Canaan to the posterity of both 
Shem and Japheth. The devoted nations of Canaan 
were terribly exterminated by the Hebrew people, sons 
of Shem; the remnant (e. g. the Gibeonites) were made 
hewers of wood and drawers of water ; and in the age of 
Solomon, were subjected to the most severe labors. See 
Josh. 9 : 20-27, and 2 Chron. 2 : 17, 18 and 1 Chron. 22: 2. 

When Noah's prophetic eye fell on Shem, the bless- 
ings that rose to his view were too rich and grand for 
description. He could only give utterance to his grate- 
ful emotions and thanksgivings in the words — "Blessed 
be Jehovah, God of Shem " ! Blessed be Jehovah, the 
God of the covenant with his professed people, the God 
of all blessings, of ever-enduring love and faithfulness! 
What will he not do for his chosen people, brought into 

relations to himself so near and so dear ! In this line 

the sweep of his prophetic eye took in the Hebrew 
race — Abraham and the patriarchs ; Moses and the pious 
kings and holy prophets ; and above all, the Great Mes- 
siah — to be born of David's line and to be the incarna- 
tion of God's mercy to a lost world. No wonder his 
soul was moved to devoutest adoration — Blessed be Je- 
hovah who reveals himself as the God of Shem ! 

Of Japheth he predicts enlargement in the sense of a 
numerous offspring — " God shall enlarge," i. e. multiply 
" Japheth," with a play on the significance of his name 
which signifies the enlarged one. God will verify his 
name and enlarge the enlarged son ; in Hebrew phrase, 



110 THE GENEALOGY OF NATIONS. 

will Japhetize Japheth. In the last clause of this 

verse, the original leaves us in doubt whether the sub- 
ject of the verb is God or Japheth. Grammatically it 
might be either — God shall dwell, or Japheth shall 
dwell, in the tents of Shem. In favor of making Japh- 
eth the subject are these considerations: — (a.) The 
verse preceding gives the prophetic destiny of Shem ; 
this, of Japheth. (b.) The expression is not alto- 
gether apposite when applied to God, for although God 
dwelt in the Hebrew temple and dwells by his Spirit 
in the bodies of his people, yet he is not elsewhere said 
to dwell in the tents of his people. The phrase leads the 
mind to such dwelling as may be said of men but is not 
said of God. — — Applied to Japheth it had a most appo- 
site and beautiful fulfillment when the Gentile races of 
Japheth came in as proselytes to the Hebrew communion, 
but far more when in the Christian age, the Jews were 
broken off from the old stock that the Gentiles might 
be grafted in, and they were ; and may be almost said 
to have taken possession of the deserted tents of Shem 
as their own through all the Christian centuries to this 
hour. All Protestant Christendom is this day of Japh- 
eth's line, fully at home in the tents of Shem. 

A very extraordinary case of the wresting of Scripture 
to make it justify crime — so great a crime as the 
enslaving of men — is the attempt to force from this 
prophecy concerning Canaan a vindication of the 
enslaving of Africans by Americans. The wresting ap- 
pears in these two broad facts: — (a.) That the Africans 
were not Canaanites, and therefore the prophecy said 
nothing about the negro race. Admitting for argu- 
ment's sake that it justified the enslaving of Canaanites, 
it did not in the least justify the enslaving of African 

negroes. (b.) If the passage had named the African 

negro instead of the Canaanite, even then a prediction 
of what shall be might fall very far short of being a com- 
mand as to what man ought to do. Prophetic predictions 
of war form not the least justification of war — fall ut- 
terly short of a divine command enjoining man's duty. 
Predictions of the Savior's death could never justify his 
murderers. 

3. The genealogy of the great historic nations. 

In Gen. 10 the Bible for once departs from its usual 



TEE GENEALOGY OP NATIONS. Ill 

method and gives a chapter of universal history — the only 
one. Elsewhere it traces the history of the one nation 
which had " the oracles of God," and in later ages, of the 
Christian church, touching the nations of the outside 
world only as they come into relations to the seed of 
Abraham or to the kingdom of Christ. But here we see 
the sons of Noah branching out to people the countries 
of the great Eastern Continent and to found the old his- 
toric nations of the earth. Japheth whom Prophecy 

was to "enlarge" (Gen. 9 : 27) furnished the tribes from 
which grew the great nations of Northern and Eastern 
Asia and for the whole of Europe. At first they occu- 
pied the maritime regions bordering on the Caspian, 
Black and Mediterranean Seas, spoken of here as " the 
isles of the Gentiles " — conforming to the Hebrew usage 

which called all maritime countries " isles." Next 

we have the sons of Ham, among whom were Nimrod, 
the builder of Babel ; Mizraim with his seven sons who 
himself gave name to Egypt ; Canaan whose posterity 
long held Palestine, and several names which appear 
either in the cities or the tribes of the valley of the 

Euphrates and of Arabia. Shem seems to have 

shared with Ham the possession of the great fertile 
basin of the Euphrates and the Tigris — the cradle of 
the race — together with portions of Arabia and in gen- 
eral of South-western Asia. 

It is a matter of some interest to know that this re- 
markable record of the birth of the great nations of an- 
tiquity is perfectly sustained by the universal history 
of all subsequent ages. Whether Chaldean or Pheni- 
cian, Egyptian or Arabian, Greek or Roman, Mongol or 
Tartar, Indo-Germanic, Celtic, Belgic or Briton — all 
find the germ of their nationality in this wonderful 
chapter, and all concur to swell and substantiate the 
proof that the human race sprang from Noah and that 
we have no occasion to look for pre-Adamic men or for 
tribes that escaped the flood and have no pedigree 
among the sons of Noah. While it was never the pur- 
pose of divine revelation to give to any great extent 
the universal history of the race, it is proper to note 
that what it does give bears the divine stamp of truth. 
All historic science does it homage. All the light that 
comes up from the comparative study of the languages 
of the race helps us still to follow the track of the emi- 
6 



112 BABEL. 

grating tribes as they diverged from the ancient home 
of Noah's family. The Science of Ethnography begins 
with this chapter of inspiration, Gen. 10. 

4. Babel and the confusion of tongues. 

Gen. 11: 1-9 records a very remarkable event, of far 
reaching consequences toward the geographical diffu- 
sion of the race. Up to this point there was but one 
language — as the record has it — " one lip and one set of 
ivords" "lip" being (perhaps) used for the mode of 
speaking, including pronunciation and possibly in- 
flection; while words are the matter of language, the 
roots or ground-forms. The fact that the latter have 
been far less variable than the former, appearing to 
some extent in all subsequent ages throughout all the 
diversities of human tongues, favors this distinction. 

Migrating from the Armenian hill country where the 
ark rested, Noah's posterity reached the fertile plain of 
Shinar, halted there, and set themselves to the build- 
ing of a magnificent and lofty tower. There being no 
stone at hand, they prepared brick, not sun-dried after 
the common Oriental method, but thoroughly burned 
for greater durability. As both consequence and proof 
of 'this durability, the supposed ruins of this great 
tower, known as " Birs Nimrood " [tower of Nimrod] are 
still extant within the area of ancient Babylon, si- 
lently witnessing alike to the labors of those fathers of 
the nations before their dispersion, and to thje truthful- 
ness of this sacred record. 

This tower was not built for safety in case of another 
flood (as some have supposed) for, with such an object, 
a high mountain and not a plain would have been 
chosen for the site ; it could at best have saved but few; 
and more than all, the record gives a very different 
view of the motive. This motive was consolidation — the 
aggregation of the masses into one vast nationality or 
kingdom — a thought due to the ambition of some con- 
trolling minds aspiring to power, distinction, fame. 
Foreseeing the tendency to dispersion they sought to 
forestall it, to find their own glory in having a multi- 
tude under their sway and in building monuments 
that could not perish. For wise reasons God blasted 
this scheme. Precisely what divine influence was in- 
terposed to confound the language of these men, I 



BABEL. 113 

doubt if it is possible for us to know certainly. It is 
supposable that the many became restive under the 
domination of the few and the severe labor of this en- 
terprise, so that diverse counsels and dissolving social 
bonds had some influence in blocking the progress of 
the work. Misunderstandings sprung up and found 
expression in diversities of tongue. What could be 
more natural when harmony gave place to discord? 
So this huge tower-building was arrested and men 

scattered abroad as they would. The new tongues 

which took their rise here had ample opportunity to 
diverge more and more widely in subsequent ages. 
The immense variety in language which the history of 
the world discloses has been a growth — the product of 
subtle causes, of segregation and non-intercourse in 
part, and in part also no doubt of diverse mental traits 
and various influences of culture. 

What the original language was, common to the race 
up to this point, has been much debated by learned 
men without arriving at_uniform and satisfactory re- 
sults. Whether it was, as some suppose, the veritable 
Hebrew tongue ; or as others think, the Aramaic, i. e. 
the Chaldee ; or whether it is utterly lost — these are 
the alternatives; but for the choice between them we 
can have no very positive data. Those descendants of 
Noah who best preserved the religious faith of the 
fathers would stand most aloof from the scenes of Babel, 
and be naturally least affected by its many-tongued con- 
troversies and its resulting confusion of speech. That 
they escaped these influences altogether is perhaps too 

much to assume. That the Aramaic (Chaldee) 

tongue, closely allied to the Hebrew, held its place for 
ages in the valley of the Euphrates, strongly favors its 
claim to be, if not the very tongue of Noah, at least of 

the same family. These points suggest probabilities , 

but fall short of certainty. 



CHAPTER X. 



ABKAHAM. 



Abraham is one of the great men in the world's re- 
ligious history. Why he is so can not be well under- 
stood and appreciated without at least a brief view of 
the state of the world religiously considered at the 
date of his call, and the demand thence resulting for 
the new religious instrumentalities of which Abraham 
was in a sort " the head-center." 

In the age before the flood religion had never really 
flourished. We read of a time when " men began to 
call on the name of the Lord," and something approx- 
imating toward system and concentration appears to 
have been introduced. But the record is silent as to 
any marked result except so far as it may appear in the 
piety of individual men, e. g. Enoch and Noah. Ap- 
parently the religious element failed even to hold its 
own against the on-rushing tides of worldliness. Even 
the sons of godly fathers formed unhallowed marriage 
connections, and consequently were borne rapidly down 
the broad current of degeneracy and moral corruption 
till only one family remained to represent the piety of 
all that generation. There was a fatal lack of moral 

forces. The flood was a vigorous moral lesson in 

itself; and besides this, the race started afresh from the 
seed of this one pious family. Ten generations bring 
us to Abraham in Ur of the Chaldees, near the old 
cradle of the race. The history of religion during this 
period from Noah to Abraham is exceedingly meager. 
Gathering up the few fragmentary notices which 
emerge from the general darkness in the age of Abra- 
ham, we find that his father's family in ancient Ur 
" served other gods " (Josh. 24 : 2) ; that Abraham, 
journeying toward the south country of Palestine, so- 
journed awhile in Gerar and was there drawn into 
grave temptation by the apparent godlessness of the 
people, since he apologizes on this wise for representing 
Sarah to be his sister and not his wife : " Because I 

(114) 



ABRAHAM— HIS TIMES. 115 

thought, Surely the fear of God is not in this place ; and 
they will slay me for my wife's sake" (Gen. 20: 10, 
11). The same temptation befell him previously in 
Egypt (Gen. 12 : 10-20) — probably indicating the same 
inward thought based on the same apparent public 
morality. Then we have the horrible wickedness of 
Sodom and Gomorrah where not ten righteous men 
could be found. And sad to say, we see a very low 
tone of religious and moral life in the family even of 
Lot, who as the nephew and special associate of Abra- 
ham should represent the better elements of society. 

Akin to these special facts is the general one that the 
personal history of Abraham through a full century of 
somewhat extensive travels and various experience 
brings him into contact with God-fearing men in only 
the single case of Melchizedek. Apart from this one 
brief but wonderful interview (Gen. 14 : 18-20) the re- 
corded history of Abraham gives the impression of a 
godly man working his way for the most part alone, 
amid godless people on every hand — alone save as the 
Lord testifies of him — " I know him that he will com- 
mand his children and his household after him and 
they shall keep the way of the Lord to do justice and 

judgment " (Gen. 18 : 19).- The case of Melchizedek, 

"a priest of the Most High God" and also " king of Sa- 
lem" — a man so venerable in piety, in personal pres- 
ence apparently, in power and in years, that even 
Abraham received his blessing and "gave him tithes 
of all " — this is the one sole bright spot on the other- 
wise dark religious life of the world as known through 
the history of Abraham. We marvel that Abraham, so 
far as appears, never met Melchizedek before and 
never saw him again. It seems strange that two such 
men, so kindred in character and spirit, each almost 
alone breasting the strong currents of prevailing wick- 
edness, should not have formed at least an infant 
Christian Association to stand by each other and bring 
their joint light to a common focus in the midst of the 
world's deep and far spreading moral darkness. But 
God had a certain great plan to bring out with Abra- 
ham and his own way of doing it. It is plain there 
was need of this new plan. The cause of piety and 
truth was in peril and called for some " new depart- 
ure " — some yet untried method and power. The world 



116 ABRAHAM. 

was waiting for some Abraham — i. e. for just the system 
of which the great and godly Abraham was the prom- 
inent figure and the historic representative. 

The patent points in this new system, put in brief- 
est words, were — Abraham the head of a great family; 
the founder of a great nation ; the representative of 
the family covenant and its first and illustrious exem- 
plar; the progenitor of the Great, long-promised Mes- 
siah ; and coupled with his lineal posterity, the reposi- 
tories of God's truth and promises — his offspring, the 
people with whom God dwelt and was publicly wor- 
shiped for ages in the presence of the idolatrous 
nations of the earth; over whom God became their 
visible earthly Sovereign, their recognized King and 
God. — —Thus the Lord laid the foundation for pro- 
gressive manifestations of himself and for a growing 
development of religious truth and of its legitimate 
forces from age to age till the Messiah should appear. 

Plainly we may recognize among the divine purposes 
in this new system, 

1. In general — to conserve, concentrate, augment and 
perpetuate the religious and moral forces of revealed 
truth. 

2. In particular : 

(1.) To utilize all the best elements of the family re- 
lation, turning to fullest account parental care and 
affection and the facilities furnished by nature to par- 
ents for the training and culture of their offspring. 
The germinal idea of this great family covenant lies in 
the promise, so often reiterated — "I will be a God to 
thee and to thy seed after thee" (Gen. 17: 7, 10, 19). 
A marvellous wealth of significance lies in these brief 
words; for what can be more rich and all-embracing 
than this— " I will be a God to thee" — thy God; all 
that a God can become to man made in his image; his 
loving Friend, his " Shield and exceeding great re- 
ward"; his hope and joy and trust; and to crown all, 
his glorious salvation ! Surely this cup of blessings is 
rich and full enough to meet the largest wants of any 
individual human heart. But when man becomes a 
father — when woman becomes a mother— a new love is 
born in the soul and new wants are thence begotten, for 



THE FAMILY COVENANT. 117 

the parental heart instinctively cries out as the heart 
of Abraham did — " that Ishmael might live before 
thee " ! Even so — responds the great parental heart of 
God — I know the heart of a parent; therefore I said 
" I will be a God to thee and to thy seed after thee "; not 
to thee alone but to thee, and also, not less, to thy be- 
loved offspring besides. 

The one comprehensive condition for the fulfillment of 
this great promise is briefly indicated in the case of 
Abraham, of whom God said — " I know him that he 
will command his children and his household after him, 
and they shall keep the way of the Lord to do justice 
and judgment; that the Lord may bring upon Abraham 
that which he hath spoken of him " (Gen. 18 : 19). The 
Lord knew that Abraham would fulfill the conditions 
so conscientiously and well that he could fulfill his 
promise. The conditions are thus incidentally brought 
out — viz. parental fidelity and authority; the early 
culture and training of his household ; consecration, 
the prayer and the faith which are legitimately begot- 
ten of this covenant and naturally correlated to it ; — 
these are obviously the fitting conditions upon which 
the fulfillment of this covenant on God's part must de- 
pend. But, 0, the wealth of blessings garnered up 

within its bosom for those who walk in the steps of 
Abraham with like precious faith and like godly nur- 
ture ! How wonderfully does piety become self-perpet- 
uating in the family line from generation to generation 
of those who take this covenant to their inmost heart 
and find God in it ever faithful and ever true and ever- 
more " mighty to save " as he hath said ! 

Here, strange to say, some good men would thrust in 
a peremptory limitation, asserting that this family 
covenant is Abrahamic and Jewish only ; good for them, 
but not good for the Christian age ; good in the national 

but not in the family sense and application thereof. 

But what is the logic of such a limitation ? Was the 
love of parent for offspring lost out of the human heart 
at the coming of Christ ? Or did the Lord forget at that 
point how deeply he had implanted this love inhuman 
bosoms ? Or did he think that piety, under the improved 
auspices of the gospel age, could thrive without the 
help of this family covenant ? Or did he reason thus — 



118 ABRAHAM. 

that the gospel age having the advantage of the Jewish 
in so many points, could afford to forego this family 
promise, and yet not on the whole fall below the Abra- 

hamic dispensation ? Or in another point of view, 

looking at the evidence rather historically than logic- 
ally, it is claimed, as I understand the argument, that 
Christ did not renew the promise — " A God to thee and 
to thy seed after thee " ; and therefore it did not pass 

over into the gospel age. To which I reply; The 

real question is — not, Did Christ renew? but, Did he 
annul? Did he say — I have come to make void the law, 
not to fulfill ? Did he say — Ifcat family covenant which 
the patriarchs loved so dearly, in the faith of which 
they trained their sons and daughters into the love and 
service of their fathers' God, has well done its work 
and can stand no longer ? Did he labor to reconcile the 
parental heart of his Jewish disciples— loving their 
dear little ones so tenderly — to this sudden withdrawal 
of divine promise — to this sore bereavement of hope 
and slaughter of faith ? Was this what he meant when 
he said; " Suffer the little children to come unto me and 
forbid them not ; for of such is the kingdom of heaven"? 
Or was this the meaning of Peter when in the first 
Pentecostal sermon he proclaimed — "The promise (of 
the Holy Ghost) is to you and to your children " (Ac. 2 : 
39) ? Or could this have been the purpose of Paul w T hen 
he testified ; " If ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's 
seed and heirs according to the promise " (Gal. 3 : 29) ? 

The proof that the gospel age ruled out the great 

family covenant is by no means apparent. It should 

be considered that the covenant is one thing ; circum- 
cision another. The covenant does not of necessity die 
because circumcision is discontinued. The covenant 
existed before circumcision and could be operative 
without it ; indeed could live wdthout any visible sign 
or seal, if so the Lord pleased. Nor does the per- 
petuity of this covenant turn on the proof that baptism 
takes in all respects the place of circumcision. Whether 
it does fill the same place or does not, the covenant 
standeth sure. There is value in an external rite or 
seal — else God had never enjoined it. But it falls ex- 
ceedingly far short of being the thing of chief value. 

Into the argument respecting the change from the 
old seal to a new one, it is not in place here to enter. 



HIS CHARACTER. 119 

This class of moral sentiments and social affections 
looks forward in the line of human generations from 
parent to offspring. Another class of no small value 
looks bach reverently, not to say proudly, to honored an- 
cestors. Here also Abraham's name became a positive 
power upon his posterity— not indeed of the very high- 
est efficiency — not altogether proof against being cor- 
rupted to the pampering of national pride and even of 
personal self-righteousness, for bad men might learn to 
say, " We have Abraham for ouf father." Yet still it 
can not be questioned that for long ages the name and 
history of Abraham bore the precious savor of his faith 
and of his staunch fidelity as the servant of the living 
God. It was the prestige of a name both great and 
good, and served to perpetuate his piety among millions 
of his offspring. In this direction all those qualities in 
Abraham which made him truly great as well as emi- 
nently good become elements in this new scheme for 
augmenting the spiritual and moral forces of God's 

kingdom among men. It can not be amiss, therefore, 

to linger here a moment and study this wonderful man. 
Verily the Lord found the right man for his purposes 
in Abram, then living in " Ur of the Chaldees." He 
called him to leave kindred (save the few who joined 
him in this migration) ; to leave also all there was to 
him in country — the land of his fathers' sepulchers; 
and travel several hundred miles to a strange unknown 
land. Abram heard and recognized God's voice ; he 
bowed to his authority and went. This first recorded 
illustration of his faith in God and obedience made its 
impression upon future ages — as we may see in the words 
of Joshua (24 : 2, 3) ; of Nehemiah (9 : 7, 8) ; of Stephen 
(Acts 7 : 2-5) ; and of the writer to the Hebrews (11 : 
8-10) — which last may be taken as a specimen of all. 
" By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into 
a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, 
obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he 
went." 

Not a little might be said of many of the lesser yet 
really noble qualities of Abraham's character — how 
magnanimous he appears in his bearing toward Lot 
(Gen. 13: 5-9); how dignified before the sons of Heth 
(Gen. 23: 3-16); how hospitable in entertaining three 
strangers who came up as he sat in his tent door in the 



120 ABRAHAM. 

heat of the day (Gen. 18: 1-16) when he "entertained 
angels unawares " (Heb. 13 : 2) ; how humble, reverent 
yet earnest in his intercession for Sodom (Gen. 18 : 23- 
33) ; how fearless, daring and wonderfully efficient in 
the rescue of Lot from the plundering hordes of the 
East (Gen. 14 : 13-24) ; how unselfish in refusing to 
participate in the recovered booty : — but all these qual- 
ities fade like stars before the sun when seen in the 
presence of his wonderful faith and unflinching obedi- 
ence to the commands* of the Lord his God. 

The most signal manifestations of his faith and obe- 
dience cluster about three several points in his history; 
viz. his call to go forth from his ancestral home and 
country ; his waiting twenty-five years for the birth of 
his one son of promise ; and the command to offer this 
only son in sacrifice. 

That first call revealed the man. It was but to hear 
God's voice ; and forthwith he " conferred not with flesh 
and blood." He seems not to have paused a moment 
to question the Lord about the conditions, or to consider 
the hardships; and he never " looked back." 

Next that promise of a son, standing so long unful- 
filled; year by year the human probabilities fading, 
dying out, till at length they are utterly dead, and 
nothing remained save the naked promise ! This was 
indeed training Abraham's faith to wait Inasmuch as 
God's chosen plan of introducing the Messiah involved 
long ages of waiting and trusting and living on simple 
promise, this was by no means a profitless or uncalled 
for illustration of the nature, the value, and the power 
of faith as in man toward God. 

High above either of these cases, in point of the 
fierceness of the trial and the wonderful spirit of calm 
and steadfast faith and endurance, stands the case of 
God's command and his consent to sacrifice his son Isaac 
(Gen. 22). The record puts this case in the foreground 
as to trial: "God did tempt Abraham" — not in the 
sinful sense — tempting to make him sin ; but in a sense 
appropriate to God — subject him to a terribly searching 
trial. First, God called him by name, " Abraham " ! 
Then said — " Take now thy son, thine only son " — that 
son of promise in whom all thy hopes and all thy heart's 
affections have been so long concentrated — that son 
" whom thou lovest " — take him and go, far away three 



OFFERING ISAAC. 121 

days' journey to a mountain which I will point out, and 
there " offer him up for a burnt-offering " / 

Was Abraham shocked ? Did he stagger under this 
stunning blow? Did he pause to debate the matter 
with God ? Did he beg that the awful agony might be 
at least delayed till he could collect himself and pre- 
pare for a trial so unexpected, so sudden, so terrible to 
bear? The record gives no hint of any thing of the 
sort. Abraham had heard God's voice many times be- 
fore and could not have had the first doubt as to its 
identity. If the least doubt had crossed his mind he 
surely would have said — "Lord, this seems so unlike 
Thee: Is it not Satan, thine enemy? I can not move 
one step until I know of a certainty that this is thine 
own voice." But there was no relief in this di- 
rection. Yet we almost instinctively ask — Did not 
Abraham expostulate? Did he not say — O my Lord, 
this Isaac is the son of thine own promise, my only 
hope for that great and long promised posterity; and 
what wilt thou do for thy truth? Besides, the deed is so 
shocking, so revolting to a father's heart! Moreover, 
hast thou not said — " Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by 
man shall his blood be shed"? And what an example 
this will be before all the tribes of the earth ! How it 
will encourage them on to murder their children in 
sacrifice to their gods! 

We can readily make up what may seem to us very 
strong arguments against obedience to such a com- 
mand; but it does not appear that Abraham whispered 
in his heart the first one of them. The only hint we 
have of his deep thoughts in the case comes through 
the writer to the Hebrew Christians — " Accounting 
that God was able to raise him up even from the dead." 
Plainly the Lord meant to show that his command 
when made known unquestionably is to be obeyed 
without debate — with no misgivings, no faltering, no 
fear. So Abraham moved firmly on, saying not a word 
to Sarah, keeping his counsel even from his two chosen 
servants and from his son; holding the strange secret 

in his solitary — shall we say, sad bosom? No; for 

there is not the first note of sadness throughout this 
wonderful transaction. Look at those three days of on- 
going journey. Ah, was not this a long time to think 
over the strange deed ! And those intervening nights — 



122 ABRAHAM. 

was there any sleep to his eyes while this terrible sus- 
pense lay still between the command and its execu- 
tion? So far as appears Abraham moved on with un- 
shaken fortitude and undisturbed calmness. Certain it 
is that he never lost his self-possession, for he continued 
to plan carefully and even sharply against disturbing 
influences. He could not trust his servants to stand 
by; so he halted them at a distance back from the 
scene. He kept the awful secret from his son Isaac un- 
til he had him bound and laid on the altar and the up- 
lifted blade was ready to fall ! 

This was the obedience of faith ! The wonderful il- 
lustration stands out before all the ages with God's seal 

of approbation broadly stamped upon it. When the 

trial had fully reached its culminating point and no 
room remained for doubt that Abraham would obey 
God at every cost, fearless of consequences, or rather 
committing all consequences to his God, then God's 
angel interposed! A ram was provided for the sacri- 
fice and the son of promise went back to a more happy 
home with a more happy father, doubly blessed in the 
renewed approbation of his covenant-keeping God. 
No wonder that God proceeded then to make that cov- 
enaxit stronger and broader and richer than ever be- 
fore! No wonder Abraham stamped into the very 
name of this ever memorable locality one of the grand 
moral lessons of the scene — "Jehovah Jireh" — In the 
mount of the Lord, himself will provide/ When you come 
to the mount of last and utmost emergency, the Lord 
will have salvation ready! His angel will appear; the 
ram of sacrifice will be there; and Isaac may go in 
peace ! 

According to the common law of Christian experi- 
ence, God's methods with Abraham were progressive; his 
manifestations of himself moved on by successive 
stages ; much this year but more the next ; so much in- 
deed at the first that it must have seemed to the good 
man very great, but more and greater were yet to come. 
The successive epochs at which God appeared to Abra- 
ham to talk with him of the great covenant are very 
distinctly marked in the history — of such sort as many 
a Christian might record in his own personal life- 
history. 



god's revelations progressive. 123 

1. In the outset of Abraham's history is that eventful 
call which brought him out from "Ur of the Chaldees," 
the narrative of which stands Gen. 12: 1-3. In the 
promise made to him then the leading points were — "I 
will make thy name great " ; "I will make of thee a 
great nation " ; " thou shalt be a blessing and in thee 
shall all the families of the earth be blessed": I will 
stand by thee to bless all who bless thee and to curse 

whosoever may curse thee. This must have raised 

in Abram's mind large expectations and assured him 
that Jehovah was indeed his own God. 

2. Immediately after Abram's arrival in Canaan 
(Gen. 12 : 7) the Lord appeared to him specially to 
identify that as the land which he had promised (Gen. 
12: 1) to show him and to give to his posterity. 
There, as in each new home, Abram built an altar and 
in devout worship called on the name of the Lord who 
had thus appeared to him. 

3. Next, after his magnanimous bearing toward Lot 
(13 : 7-9, 14-18) in which he seemed ready to waive all 
claim to any territory Lot might choose to occupy. 
The Lord bade him lift up his eyes toward every point 
of the compass, all round about and reiterated his 
grant of the whole — " All the land which thou seest to 
thee will I give it and to thy seed forever." Also, that 
his seed should be as the dust of the earth. His gener- 
ous magnanimity toward Lot in nowise damaged his 
standing with God or his rights in the goodly land of 
promise. 

4. A yet richer scene of divine manifestation followed 
Abram's rescue of Lot from the plundering horde of the 
great Eastern kings (Gen. 15). The first words were 
significant and precious : " Fear not, Abram ; I am thy 
shield and thine exceeding great reward." Abram 
knew enough of human nature and of the resentful, 
lawless spirit of those warlike kings to see that he was 
exposed to their vengeance and that they might return 
any day with more military force than his household 
could muster. It was therefore at once timely and 
kind in the Lord to meet him at this point with this 
comforting assurance: "Fear not; I am thy shield"; I 
stand between thee and those vengeful foes : my strong 
arm shall be a wall of fire round about thee. Moreover 
Abram had nobly refused to appropriate to his per- 



124 ABRAHAM. 

sonal use even a thread or a shoe-latchet of the booty- 
brought back from his routed enemies — whereupon the 
Lord said, " I will be thine exceeding great re- 
ward." Truly when a man's ways please the Lord, 

he not only keeps his enemies at peace with him but 

makes all things go well. On this re-appearance the 

Lord promised him a son more distinctly than ever be- 
fore, and posterity as the stars in number. Here it is 
said definitely — " Abraham believed God and God 
counted it to him for righteousness." His faith pleased 
God, and because of it, God accepted him and he stood 

as one who is "all right before God." Remarkably 

the Lord at this time identified himself to Abraham as 
the same God who had appeared to him in his father- 
land and called him forth into Canaan and said, This 
is the very land I then promised to give thee ; to which 
Abraham replied (v. 8), " Whereby shall I know that I 
shall inherit it"? At once the Lord proceeded to rat- 
ify his covenant in the usual Oriental manner. A 
heifer, a she-goat and a ram — one from each species 
commonly used in sacrifice — are brought forward; each 
is cut into two parts; the parts are laid asunder; a 
turtle-dove and a young pigeon, also used for sacrifice 
in certain contingencies, were added but not cut in 
two. Then when night came on, a deep sleep fell upon 
Abraham and the Lord gave him in vision certain 
prophetic views of his posterity; and ratified the cov- 
enant by passing (in the symbol of fire and smoke) be- 
tween the severed parts of the sacrificial animals. Of 
this method of ratifying covenants we have historical 
traces in Jer. 34: 18-20. We have also early and de- 
cisive indications of the same mode in the fact that at 
least in the Hebrew, Greek and Latin tongues the word 
, for ratifying a covenant means primarily to cut. The 
phrase is, to cut a covenant. The prominent thing in 
the transaction was the cutting of the animal in twain 
that the contracting parties might pass solemnly be- 
tween the parts of it. It seems to be assumed that the 
contracting parties virtually imprecated upon them- 
selves a like doom if they proved faithless to their cov- 
enant. 

5. At the next eventful appearance Abraham had 
been waiting in faith for the son of promise a quarter 
of a century and was perhaps tempted to think the ful- 



PROGRESSIVE. 125 

fillment fast becoming impossible. Pertinently there- 
fore the first words of the Lord were — "lam the Almighty 
God! Walk before me and be thou perfect" ; fear noth- 
ing; my covenant stands fast, I will multiply thee 
exceedingly ! Abraham fell on his face and God talked 
with him, reiterating his promise of posterity, giving 
unwonted prominence to the family feature of his 
covenant — " a God to thee and to thy seed after thee " — 
and instituting the rite of circumcision. 

6. The sixth and last recorded appearance followed 
the triumph of Abraham's faith in the sacrifice of his 
only son. In this the Lord re-affirmed the great ele- 
ments of his promise — posterity as the stars of heaven; 
triumphant over their enemies; a blessing to all the 
nations of the earth. Thus at successive and some- 
what remote intervals and mostly on special occasions 
the Lord manifested himself to his servant to confirm 
his faith, to enlarge the range of promise and to signify 
his pleasure in the obedient trustful life of his friend. 

Such is the religious history of Abraham as related 
to his covenant God. Corresponding to this is the his- 
tory of his posterity, the Hebrew nation. To them as 
to their patriarchal father God manifested himself 
through long ages, at successive points, e. g. in their 
Egypt life ; in his uplifted arm over Pharaoh to bring 
them forth in the memorable Exodus ; at the Red Sea; 
at Sinai; all through their wilderness life ; at the Jor- 
dan crossing ; in the conquest of Canaan, and onward, 
onward, till the coming at length of that greater Seed 
of Abraham in whom most signally were all the nations 
of the earth to be blessed. But to the details of this 
latter history we must give more definite attention in 
their place and order. 

One other special feature in the great covenant with 
Abraham should be noticed. 

In many respects this covenant made Abraham and 
his posterity a peculiar people, discriminating broadly 
between them and every other nation, and accumula- 
ting the blessings of God upon them in no stinted 
measure. It might be apprehended that such exclusive- 
ness would beget bigotry, national pride and self-right- 
eousness; but, with wisest forethought, the Lord put 
into this covenant one counteracting element of great 



126 ABRAHAM. 

power, viz. that he ordained them to be a blessing to all the 
nations of the earth. " In thee and in thy seed shall all 
the nations of the earth be blessed." It was never the 
thought of God that the Hebrew people should live to 
themselves and for themselves — should garner their own 
store-house full of heavenly blessings and leave all other 
peoples to shift for themselves as best they might. No ; 
God's plan contemplated the culture in their souls of 
the broadest benevolence, and this, pressed into service 
by a sense of largest responsibility to meet the revealed 
purposes of God as to their work. Into this great 
system which made them his peculiar people, he put, 
openly and clearly, the germinal idea of a salvation to 
be provided for the wide world — this covenant people 
to be the almoners of all these blessings to the otherwise 
benighted and perishing nations. Properly understood 
and duly regarded, this germinal idea would have de- 
veloped in their hearts and lives the true missionary 
spirit, would have given at once both breadth and depth 
to their piety, would have made them feel that God had 
great thoughts of mercy for the whole race of man, and 
had honored them as his ministers in giving this sal- 
vation to every creature. At the very least here was 
opened a thoroughly rich field for prayer, the broadest 
scope for real sympathy with the benevolence of the 
Great Father of all the nations and a powerful antidote 
against the narrow exclusiveness which might other- 
wise have shrunk and shriveled their piety and nar- 
rowed their aspirations to themselves and their 
land. How often in the heart of the good men 
of later times — the men like Moses, Samuel, Da- 
vid, Isaiah, — must the kindling thought have been 
sprung by this great germinal promise — When shall 
these things be? When shall the full fruitage of these 
great promises be realized? What have we to do to 
hasten the coming of that sublime consummation ? 

It remains to speak more definitely of the promises 
made to Abraham as including the great Messiah. 

In this as in most other Messianic prophecies, 
the argument is threefold; 

(1) The language obviously admits the Messiah, i. e. 
may be construed without violence to apply to him, 
or at least to include him : 



THE GREAT MESSIAH. 127 

(2) Its meaning is so broad that it must include him ; 
the blessings are too great to be supposed possible with- 
out him — apart from him : and 

(3) The inspired writers of the New Testament found 
the Messiah in this prophecy. 

The substance of the prophecy is in the words — " In 
thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed " 
(Gen. 22 : 18 and 26 : 4). Beyond question this may in- 
clude the Messiah as the author of these really universal 
blessings — blessings for all the nations of the earth. 
Nay more ; the blessings are too great, too broad, too far 
reaching to admit any supposable interpretation short 
of the Messiah and the gospel age. Historically no ful- 
fillment less broad than the Christian can possibly be 
made out. In Christ and in him only can this predic- 
tion be fulfilled. 

And to crown all, our Lord himself testifies ; " Your 
father Abraham rejoiced to see my day ; and he saw it 
and was glad" (Jno. 8 : 56). It may be noticed that the 
word used by our Lord was not me, my person ; but " my 
day" — the gospel age; the great events of it ; the won- 
derful results of my coming — which is no doubt the ex- 
act truth. It was rather what was to be achieved by 
Christ in the way of blessings upon all the nations than 
w T hat lay in Christ's person definitely that Abraham 
prophetically saw. 

Paul adds his testimony that these words refer to 
Christ; (a.) Affirming (Gal. 3 : 8)— "The Scripture, fore- 
seeing that God would justify the nations [" heathen"] 
through faith, preached before the gospel to Abraham, 
saying, l In thee shall all nations be blessed.' " " Preached 
before " is simply predicted, revealed by prophecy, with 
the accessory idea that the thing revealed was the gos- 
pel, the news of salvation. (b.) To show that in his 

view the burden and fullness of this prophecy are Christ 
and nothing less or other than Christ, he says in this 
connection (v. 16); "Now to Abraham and to his seed 
were 'the promises made. He saith not — And to seeds 
as of many, but as of one — And to thy seed, which is 
Christ." 

Waiving any special effort to justify Paul's argument 
from the singular number of the word " seed," his testi- 
mony is certainly valid to the point for which I have 



128 ABRAHAM. 

adduced it, viz. that Paul saw Christ in this prophecy. 
How much soever the principles of exegesis may reluc- 
tate, they certainly will not deny that he interprets the 
prophecy concerning Christ. Their complaint would 
be that he ties it down to Christ too exclusively. 

It must be held therefore that the promises made to 
Abraham really include a prophecy of Christ. We could 
not infer from the record in Genesis how well Abraham 
understood the reference to the Messiah. But the al- 
lusions to this point in the New Testament give us 
light, our Savior most distinctly declaring — Abraham 
rejoiced that he might see my day; he saw it — with 
great joy. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
speaking of Abraham and the patriarchs as not having 
received the promised blessings but as seeing them from 
afar and embracing them, has in mind specially their 
faith in the promised heavenly city (Heb. 11: 10, 13, 14, 
16), yet not to the exclusion of him who prepares those 
mansions for his people (Jno. 14 : 2, 3). His testimony 
is in point to show that Abraham looked beyond the 
earthly side of those blessings to the heavenly; rested 
not in the earthly Canaan, not in the multitude of his 
lineal sons and daughters ; but reached out beyond these 
to 'the city that hath eternal foundations and to the 
blessings of the Great Messiah, good for all the nations 
of the earth. The nearer and lesser blessings had a 
power of suggestion, lifting his thought to the more re- 
mote and greater. A man who talked with God so inti- 
mately can not be supposed to have missed these 
grand ideas of the gospel age and of the heavenly 
state which we are sometimes wont to regard as the 
special, not to say exclusive, revelations of the New 
Testament. 

Sodom and Gomorrah. 

Involved in this history of Abraham, there occurs 
this ever memorable case of sudden and most fearful 
judgment upon the ungodly in this world — the over- 
throw of the cities of the plain. Sodom and Gomorrah 
only are mentioned by name in Gen. 13: 10 and 19: 
24, 28) ; in several cases for brevity, Sodom only ; but 
Moses (Deut. 20 : 23) and Hosea (11 : 8) speak of Admah 
and Zeboim as also overthrown. These were contigu,- 



SODOM AND GOMORRAH. 129 

ous and (in Gen. 14: 2) confederate cities. The nar- 
rative sets forth their appalling and absolutely universal 
wickedness. Other references suggest the causes or oc- 
casions (Ezek. 16: 49, 50), and intimate that the better 
life and the reproving testimony of Lot were powerless 
(2 Pet. 2 : 7, 8). 

The narrative also makes prominent the immediate 
agency of God in this destruction. " The Lord rained 
upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah fire and brimstone 
from the Lord out of heaven " (Gen. 19: 24). "When 
Abraham looked toward Sodom and all the land of the 
plain, lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke 
of a great furnace " (v. 28). 

The case became for all future time a standard illus- 
tration of God's most sudden, fearful and utter destruc- 
tion of the wicked. (See Deut. 29 : 23 and Isa. 13 : 19 
and Jer. 20 : 16 and 50 : 40 and Amos. 4:11 and 2 Pet. 
2 : 6 and Jude 7.) It classes itself naturally w r ith the 
deluge of Noah's time and with the fall of Pharaoh's 
host in the Red Sea, and the swallowing up of Korah 
and his company in the wilderness — all combining to 
show that God never lacks the means or the power to 
begin his threatened retribution upon the wicked here 
in time whenever he deems it w T ise for the moral ends 
of warning. 

The question of secondary agencies is of altogether 
secondary importance. It may w r ell suffice us that 
God's hand teas there. It matters but little whether he 
made use of the agencies of the natural world — light- 
ning and the combustible materials of that locality, or 
otherwise. That these natural agencies were employed 

is perhaps probable. The locality of those cities is 

undoubtedly identified, viz. at the southern extremity 
of the Dead Sea, now and for many ages submerged 
though in quite shallow water. The adjacent soil af- 
fords bitumen and other inflammable substances in 
abundance, indicating with great probability that a 
prodigious discharge of electricity ignited the whole 
region, fire from the Lord out of heaven gleaming and 
crashing; the atmosphere all ablaze with flames and 
the very ground on which the city stood burning with 
terrible fury. It might seem that the deep moral pol- 
lutions of its people had doomed that vast plain to be 
first purified by fire and then sunk from human view 



130 THE ANGEL OF THE LORD. 

for all the coming ages by its subsidence beneath the 

waters of the Dead Sea. In view of this appalling 

scene, how terribly significant become the words of 
Jude — " Set forth for an example, suffering the venge- 
ance of eternal fire " ! How easily and yet how fear- 
fully can the Almighty execute the judgments written 
against guilty sinners who scorn his words of warning 
and dare his vengeance ! 

"The Angel of the Lord." 

Cases occur in Old Testament history in which the 
Lord appears in visible form and is called interchange- 
ably "the Lord" and "the Angel of the Lord." See 
the personal history of Hagar (Gen. 16 : 7, 13) ; of Abra- 
ham (Gen. 18 : 2, 16, 33 and 22 : 11, 15-18) ; of Jacob 
(Gen. 31 : 11-13, 16) ; of Moses (Exod. 3 : 2, 4, 6, 7, etc., 
and 23: 20-23); of Gideon (Judg. 6: 11, 12, 14, 20-23) 
and of Manoah (Judg. 13: 18, 22). The term "angel" 
means in general a messenger; but is manifestly ap- 
plied and therefore is applicable to the visible man- 
ifestations of God himself, supposably of the second per- 
son of the Godhead, i. e. God as made manifest to mor- 
tals. The cases above referred to are entirely decisive 
as to the usage of the phrase, " The Angel of the Lord" 
in some cases (not relatively many) to denote the very 
Presence of the Lord himself coming down to reveal 
himself to his people. In Gen. 18 : first three men ap- 
pear before Abraham; he entertains them. Two of 
them go on toward Sodom ; one remains talking with 
Abraham. It is said "Abraham stood yet before, the 
Lord"; then drew near and offered that remarkable 
prayer of intercession for Sodom; after which "the 
Lord went his way and Abraham returned to his 

place." In Gen. 22, when Abraham had stretched 

forth his hand to slay his son, " the angel of the Lord 
called to him out of heaven." Shortly after (vs. 15-18) 
"the angel of the Lord called unto Abraham out of 
heaven the second time and said, By myself have I 

sworn, saith the Lord, etc Because thou hast 

obeyed my voice." This can be no other than the very 
God. The passages above referred to from the his- 
tory of Moses are striking. In Exod. 23: 20-23 we 
read : " Behold I send an angel before thee to keep thee 



THE ANGEL OF THE LORD. 131 

in the way and to bring thee into the place which I 
have prepared. Beware of him" (i. e. not to offend him) 
" and obey his voice ; provoke him not ; for he will not 
pardon your transgressions, for my name is in him"— 
name, as usual in the sense of the very qualities of 
character of w T hich the name is a significant indi- 
cation. 



CHAPTER XL 

THE PATKIAECHS. 

Isaac. 

The story of Isaac is brief; his life uneventful, per- 
haps we might say monotonous. The record shows 
that the Lord appeared to him on two distinct occa- 
sions; at Gerar (Gen. 26: 2-5), renewing the covenant 
previously made with Abraham, with a very full re- 
statement of all its salient points; also at Beersheba 
(26: 23-25) where we are told "he builded an altar and 
called on the name of the Lord," in the steps of his 

godly father. We see a point of his character in the 

fact stated incidentally, that Esau's marriage into 
Hittite families "was a grief of mind to Isaac and to 
Rebekah." Esau lacked sympathy with the spirit of 
the pious patriarchs and utterly failed. to appreciate the 
inheritance of blessings which had lain so near the 
heart of his grandfather Abraham and of his father 
Isaac — facts which the historian touches briefly — 
"Thus Esau despised his birthright." The writer to 
the Hebrews puts the case forcibly: "Who for one 

morsel of meat sold his birthright " (12 : 16). We 

have no means of knowing how persistently and wisely 
Rebekah had labored to win and hold him by her 
maternal opportunities and power. In later years she 
seems to have withdrawn her heart from him to 
give it (with apparently extreme partiality) to Ja- 
cob. Of her duplicity in the matter of the paternal 

blessing, it can scarcely be necessary to say that the 
fact of its being recorded by no means proves that the 
Lord justified it. Indeed the absence of any explicit 
condemnation can not be taken as equivalent to a jus- 
tification. Jacob's exile from his father's house and 
home for twenty long years — so manifestly the result 
of this duplicity — must have been to her mind pain- 
fully suggestive. It seems plainly to have been one of 
God's ways in providence to rebuke and chasten her 
(132) 



JACOB. 133 

for this wrong, and perhaps we may add, to save Jacob's 
soul by removing him from a maternal influence which 
was so defective— not to say faulty and pernicious. 

As to Isaac, one point only is named of him by the 
writer to the Hebrews in his catalogue of illustrious 
examples of faith : "By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau 
concerning things to come" (11: 20). These benedic- 
tions (recorded Gen. 27 : 28, 29, 33, 37, 39, 40) must be 
regarded as far more than a venerable father's good 
wishes — indeed as nothing less than prophetic bene- 
dictions — words uttered under the divine impulses of 
the Holy Ghost. Their broad outlook embraced the 
great outlines of the future history of the two nations 
that were before him in the person of his two sons. 

Jacob. 

In Jacob's history there is no lack of stirring inci- 
dent and critical exigency; in his character, no lack of 
positive elements and vigorous force. Bethel where he 
seems to have found God first; Mahanaim w r here the 
double hosts of God met him and the murderous rage 
of Esau threatened every precious life in all his house- 
hold, and he found help only as he wrestled with the 
angel of the covenant till he prevailed ; the scenes of 
his sojourning in Canaan where Joseph first comes to 
view, envied and hated of his brethren, and his father 
mourned for him many days as dead ; and finally Goshen 
where the aged patriarch found his lost Joseph yet 
alive and lord of all Egypt ; stood before Pharaoh ; saw 
his sons and sons' sons — a growing host; gave them his 
blessing and was gathered to his fathers : — surely these 
salient points of his history indicate no lack of adven- 
ture, and in the religious point of view, abundant 
scenes of moral trial — exigencies that tasked his virtue 
and endurance, his faith and patience, and in the end 
brought forth his chastened soul purified by the dis- 
cipline of suffering and strong in the faith of Abra- 
ham's God. 

To understand well the scenes of Bethel, we must 
think of a young man, emerging from boyhood — his 
fond mother's chief beloved — not to say, her pet boy — 
never yet thrown upon his own resources ; an heir to 
wealth; a child of ease — perhaps of maternal in- 



134 THE PATRIARCHS. 

dulgence ; — but now suddenly brought into peril of life 
from his twin brother's indignant rage and violence. 
It would be so horrible to the mother to see her Jacob 
slain by his own brother's hand and to "lose them both 
in one day"! (Gen. 27: 45). Safety seemed to be 
only in flight, so she must needs send him secretly to 
the distant land of her birth — the old maternal family 
home. Therefore, with many a pang of heart, and (let 
us hope) with many a prayer, she commended him to 
the God of the covenant and sent him away. 

One day of thoughtful travel had passed slowly over 
Jacob, his mind traversing by many rapid transitions 
from the home he had left behind to the new scenes 
that met his eye ; from the brother before whose fury he 
was fleeing, to the unknown experiences of life among 
friends he had never seen. At last the sun had gone 
down; the eye had nothing more to see; weariness 
called for rest and sleep. With a stone for his pillow, 
with his tunic wrapt about him, and the broad heavens 
above for his canopy, he slept and dreamed — dreamed 
of a ladder with its foot on the earth beside him and its 
top in the heavens ; and wonderful to see ! the angels of 
God descending and ascending upon it! A new sense 
of communication between earth and heaven came 
upon him, assuming a strange reality when he saw the 
Lord standing above it and heard him say, " I am the 
Lord God of Abraham thy father and the God of Isaac." 
Before this Jacob had heard of that wonderful covenant 
of God so often ratified with his venerable grandfather 
and his father. The transfer of blessing from Isaac to 
himself as the lineal heir of both birthright and bless- 
ing was a thing of quite recent experience. How fully 
he had comprehended its glorious significance before 
does not appear ; but now that he is cast out alone upon 
the wide, unknown world — now that he so much needs 
the Great God for his friend — it comes over him with 
solemn, precious interest. The words spoken were full 
of comfort. They reminded him of the great family 
promise to Abraham, renewed to his father Isaac : "A 
God to thee and to thy seed after thee" and he felt that 
the promise put its finger upon his own aching, solitary 
heart. He had a fresh assurance that his life would not 
come to nought and be a failure, for the Lord said: 
" The land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it and 



JACOB. 135 

to thy seed ; and thy seed shall be as the dust of the 
earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the West and to 
the East ; to the North and to the South ; and in thee 
and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be 
blessed." And lest these blessings might seem too re- 
mote to meet his sense of present peril and need, the 
Lord kindly added — "And behold I am with thee and 
will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and 
will bring thee again to this land ; for I will not leave 
thee until I have done that which I have spoken to 
thee of." How deeply these scenes and words impressed 
the soul of the youthful Jacob is apparent in the few 
words which fell from his lips when he came to the full 
consciousness of wakeful life. " Surely the Lord is in 
this place, and I knew it not " ! I had not thought to 
meet God here and to meet him sol I thought I was 

utterly alone ; but lo! God is here I We must suppose 

that Jacob had never been so near to God before. Such 
a meeting with the Majesty of heaven was new to his 
experience, and a sense of solemn awe — of reverence 
amounting to fear, came upon him : — as the record is, 
" he was afraid and said, How dreadful is this place ! 
This is none other than the house of God, and this is 
the gate of heaven." The ladder stretching upward, its 
foot resting beside him and its top in the heavens, the 
open door far in the sky through which the angels 
seemed to come and go; the voice of the Lord himself 
and withal uttering such words — ah indeed, the whole 
effect w T as as if God and heaven had truly dropped 
down upon him, and this was God's dwelling-place and 
heaven's door was there ! 

The scene was entirely too precious to be suffered to 
pass into oblivion ; so Jacob's thought turned to some 
memorial of the scene and to a moral adjustment of his 
future life to this heavenly call. First, he took the stone 
which had served him for a pillow and set it up for a 
pillar and poured oil upon the top of it — a sacred unc- 
tion. To the place he gave the significant name 

" Bethel " — house of God — by which it was ever after 
known. Then, by a solemn vow, he gave himself to the 
Lord who had thus called and comforted him with prom- 
ise. We read, " Jacob vowed a vow, saying, l If God will 
be with me and will keep me in this w r ay that I go, and 
will give me bread to eat and raiment to put on so that 
7 



136 THE PATRIARCHS. 

I come again to my father's house in peace, then shall 
the Lord be my God, and this stone which I have set 
for a pillar shall be God's house ; and of all that thou 
shalt give me, I will surely give the tenth unto thee.' " 
If we press the word "if" at the head of this sen- 
tence so as to make it thoroughly conditional, and withal 
suggesting some shades of doubt whether God would 
prove faithful, we shall wrong Jacob, imputing to him 
what manifestly he could not have meant. His words 
must be taken thus : — Inasmuch as God has so kindly 
promised to be with me in all my otherwise doubtful 
way, and to bring me back despite of all peril to my 
father's house again, I accept him as in very deed my 
God; and out of all my accumulated wealth, I will surely 

give one tenth to him. The spirit is that of one 

drawn by God's promised mercy — not of one Avho stands 
in grave doubt whether God will come up to the full 
height of his promise. These are the words of one who 
has no doubt on that point and who refers to that prom- 
ise only to say that because of it, under the joyful as- 
surance of it, he gives himself to God in full, prompt, 
and perpetual consecration. A reverent soul brought 
so near to God, impressed with a sense that heaven and 
God are verily here, does not tempt and provoke God by 
expressing the fear that he will not prove faithful to 

his promises ! Late into the morning Jacob lingered 

in this hallowed spot as one loth to close such an inter- 
view with God and break the charm of such sacred asso- 
ciations. And when at length he must go on his jour- 
ney, it was with far other heart than in his solitary 
journey of the day before. 

Of the scenes of his sojourn at Haran there is no oc- 
casion to speak particularly. Perhaps the deception in 
which his mother and himself were the responsible 
parties came up fresh and clear to him when he found 
that Laban had taken similar liberties with him, giving 
him Leah when Rachel was in the bond. A man never 
gets so sharp and keen a sense of the wrong of these 
little deceptions as when he becomes the victim and 
the sting goes deep into his own bosom. This is some- 
times the Lord's way to testify his disapprobation of 
this wrong and to impress his own view of it upon those 
who may have sinfully indulged in it. 



MAHANAIM. 137 

Mahanaim. 

The second great exigency of Jacob's life has its record 
in Gen. 32. Twenty years have passed away in Haran ; 
he has wives, children, and ample substance of cattle, 
sheep, camels. Indeed all his children except Benja- 
min are now about him. Not feeling at home longer 
with Laban ; remembering the Lord's promise to give 
Canaan to him and to his children ; mindful moreover 
of the scenes of Bethel, and we may hope, somewhat 
fearful lest the household gods which were dangerously 
near the heart of Laban, might be a snare to his wives 
and children, he fully makes up his mind to return to 
Canaan. 

At some point on this return journey, (as the narra- 
tive states rather abruptly), the angels of God met him. 
Jacob saw them and said, " This is God's host " — a con- 
voy — a kind of military guard, the demand for which 
presently appeared. He gave name to the place from 
the fact — " Mahanaim " — the double camps or hosts. 
They seem to have been an intimation to him that 
danger was near, and that God's hosts w r ere near also 
for his rescue. 

On his way back to Canaan, and consequently ap- 
proaching the residence of Esau in the land of Seir, 
Jacob is fully aware that his coming must be known 
to Esau, and therefore he sends messengers to him for 
the purpose of conciliating his good will. These mes- 
sengers soon returned to Jacob, saying ; " We came to 
thy brother Esau, and also he cometh to meet thee and 
four hundred men with him." In an instant Jacob 
comprehends the situation and sees his danger. Those 
four hundred men are led on by Esau with no peaceful 
purpose. The lapse of twenty years has not sufficed to 
quench the fire of his wrath and to revive fraternal af- 
fection. Still unforgiving he comes on " breathing out 
threatening and slaughter," exhibiting identically the 
same character which he impressed on his posterity and 
which manifested itself in the vindictiveness of the 
Edomites at the fall of Jerusalem before the Chaldean 
power. Amos (1 : 11, 12) and Obadiah (vs. 10-16) rep- 
resent this vindictiveness against the posterity of his 
brother Jacob as the ground and reason of God's over- 
whelming judgments on their nation and land. " Because 



138 JACOB. 

he did pursue his brother with the sword and did cast 
off all pity, and his anger did tear perpetually, and he 

nursed his wrath for ever." Such was the bearing of 

his nation toward the sons of Jacob in the day of Jeru- 
salem's fall ; and with this same spirit he is coming, at 
the point of his history now before us, to cut off Jacob's 

powerless family. With admirable self-possession 

and wisdom, Jacob laid his plans promptly — first, to 
divide his train into two parts, placing one at some 
distance in advance of the other, so that if the front 
column were attacked, the rear might stand some chance 
of escape: and secondly, to send forward a valuable 
present to Esau; — "two hundred goats; two hundred 
ewes and twenty rams ; thirty milch camels with their 
colts ; forty kine ; ten bulls ; twenty she-asses and ten 
foals" (Gen. 32: 13-15) — enough at least to arrest 
Esau's attention and perhaps to soothe his spirit toward 
his brother. These he sent forward with fitting words 
of conciliation : — but by far the most vital measure of 
relief yet remained — prayer to the Great God of the cove- 
nant Vs. 9-12 record the words of this prayer, appar- 
ently as offered to God in the first moments after the 
messengers returned and apprised him of his danger. 
The prudential arrangements above named followed, 
occupying the morning hours of the day. When night 
came on Jacob was left alone save that the Lord came 
down in form as a man — the angel of the covenant — 
and a scene of struggling, wrestling prayer ensued which 
ceased not till the dawn of the morning. As the nar- 
rative has it; "Jacob was left alone, and there wrestled 
a man with him until the break of day. And when he 
saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the 
hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob's thigh 
was out of joint as he wrestled with him. And he [the 
angel-man] said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And 
he [Jacob] replied — I will not let thee go except thou 
bless me. And he said unto him, What is thy name? 
And he said, Jacob. And he said — Thy name shall no 
more be called Jacob, but Israel ; for as a Prince hast 
thou power with God and hast prevailed. And Jacob 
asked him and said, Tell me, I pray thee, thy name ; 
and he said — Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after 
my name? And he blessed him there. And Jacob 



THE STRUGGLE OF PRAYER. 139 

called the name of the place Peniel, for I have seen 
God face to face and my life is preserved." 

What we may call the costume, the purely external 
forms of this scene, are striking, peculiar, but thoroughly 
significant. In view of the circumstances, there can 
not be the least doubt that, mentally, spiritually, — this 
is a scene of prayer — nothing else, less or more. The 
prayer is a struggle of soul on the part of the suppliant. 
He is in trouble ; he is shut up to God alone for help ; 
and he feels that he can not be denied. The scene of the 
wrestling must imply that God debates this matter 
with the suppliant Jacob, apparently resisting, contend- 
ing, — certainly delaying, and prolonging the conflict 
hour after hour of the live-long night till break of day. 
Seeing that he prevailed not to silence Jacob's suppli- 
cation, i. e. to break his hold as a wrestler, he touched 
the hollow of Jacob's thigh, crippling the wrestler 
seriously, yet leaving his arms w r ith strength unim- 
paired to hold fast his antagonist. Then as if to test 
Jacob's faith and endurance to the utmost, he said — 
"Let me go, for the day breaketh ; " to which Jacob re- 
plied — " I will not let thee go except thou bless me." 
Jacob as a wrestler with one thigh out of joint had be- 
come powerless to cast his opponent ; but with his arms 
in their full strength he could hold on — and he did. 
The culminating point in the struggle is reached in 
these remarkable words ; "I will not let thee go except 
thou bless me." I can not be denied. I have thy prom- 
ise : it touches this very case — protection and succor till 
I return to my country ; and I can not let go my hold. 

I must have help now, or perish ! The change of name 

is richly significant. Jacob, L e. supplanter, suggested 
the deception by which he obtained from his blind 
father the blessing ; but with it came the rage of his 
brother and this present peril to himself and to his 
great family. " Israel " means a prince with God — one 
who has prevailed in the struggle of prayer and obtained 
the blessing he sought. The change of name thus in- 
dicates the change in Jacob's relations to God and to 
Esau which followed his victory in this prayer-struggle. 

But what is the significance of this example ? What 
was really the animus of this conflict ? what the reason 
for it ; what the point in debate, and what the great 
moral lessons which it teaches ? 



140 JACOB. 

Our data for the answer to these questions must come 
from one or both of two sources : 

(a.) The circumstances of the present case; 

(b.) The principles of God's spiritual administration of 
grace to his people in connection with prayer. 

(a) As to the circumstances of the present case : — The 
covenant of God with Jacob is very definite. Jacob un- 
derstands and manifestly pleads it, as we see in this 
chapter. These are his words as recorded : " O God of 
my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac " — the 
Lord [the Jehovah, signifying the faithful God of his peo- 
ple] " who saidst to me, Return unto thy country and to 
thy kindred and I will deal well with thee : I am not 
worthy of the least of all thy mercies and of all thy 
truth which thou hast showed unto thy servant; for 
with my staff I passed over this Jordan, and now I am 
become two bands. Deliver me, I pray thee, from the 
hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I fear 
him, lest he will come and smite me and the mother 
with the children. And thou saidst, I will surely do 
thee good and make thy seed as the sand of the sea which 

can not be numbered for multitude." It should be 

noted that the promise in this covenant precisely meets 
Jacob's present emergency — " Return and I will deal 
well with thee : thou saidst, I will surely do thee good 
and make thy seed as the sand of the sea." These points 
fully covered his present danger. Jacob doubtless had 
in mind the very explicit terms of this covenant as an- 
nounced to him at Bethel : " I am with thee and will 
keep thee in all places whither thou goest and will bring 
thee again to this land; for I will not leave thee until I 
have done that which I have spoken to thee of." There 
is therefore no room for mistake on this point. The 
Lord's promise to Jacob is explicit, and in its terms 
guarantees perfect protection in his present peril. Why, 
then, it will be asked, was this night-long struggle ? 

We may find some light toward the answer if we re- 
member that every promise of God to man must in the 
nature of the case imply certain conditions; and the 
promise in this covenant equally with all other prom- 
ises. " If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will 
not hear me." " Ye ask and receive not because ye ask 

amiss." As bearing on this very covenant let us 

recall the ground of the Lord's confidence that he should 



THE STRUGGLE OF PRAYER. 141 

be able to fulfill his words to Abraham : " I know him 
that he will command his children and his household 
after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord to 
do justice and judgment, that the Lord may bring upon 

Abraham that which he hath spoken of him" Now it will 

be in point to consider that these scenes of danger from 
Esau's rage inevitably brought up between the Lord 
and Jacob the question whether the deception practiced 
upon Isaac to transfer to Jacob the blessing which legit- 
imately fell to Esau could be passed over by the Lord 
without rebuke. Was it proper that the Lord should 
endorse it with no rebuke w r hatever ? If he were ever 
to bear his protest against it, the present was the time. 
— — Yet further, the fact had but recently come to 
Jacob's knowledge that his favorite Rachel had stolen 
her father's gods and taken them with her as she left 
the family home. Had Jacob been faithful to the God 
of his fathers in teaching and impressing the worship 
of the one true God and in protesting solemnly against 
idol-worship ? And had he been firm and outspoken 
against such theft and deception as that of his beloved 
Rachel? Must not things of this sort be inquired into 
and definitely settled before the Lord could interpose 
with such manifest deliverance as would virtually en- 
dorse Jacob as right before God ? It ought not to es- 
cape our notice that while the narrative in the preceding 
chapter (31) recites the misconduct of Rachel and shows 
that Jacob then for the first time became aware of the 
extent of her idolatry, theft, and deception, so a subse- 
quent narrative (35 : 1-4) apprises us in a very signifi- 
cant way that both the Lord and Jacob remembered this 
wonderful night of struggle, and that some of the mat- 
ters then in issue were set right. " God said to Jacob — 
Arise, go up to Bethel [that place of so many hallowed 
associations] and dwell there and make there an altar 
unto God who appeared to thee when thou fleddest from 
the face of Esau thy brother. Then Jacob said to his 
household and to all that were with him, Put away the 
strange gods that are among you, and be clean, and change 
your garments, and let us arise and go up to Bethel, 
and I will make there an altar unto God who answered 
me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way 
which I went." Yes, " he who answered me in that 
day of my distress," before whom this whole matter was 



142 JACOB. 

reviewed and debated through that long, fearful night — 
who called me to account in that dread emergency and 
pointed out my sins and put my soul to most humble 
confession of past short-comings and to most solemn 
vows of future service ; — let us amend our ways and our 
doings before the eye of this holy God who mercifully 
spared us in that fearful hour. These circumstances 
throw light upon this remarkable scene of prayer. 

(b.) We may also call to mind the principles of God's 
spiritual administration over his people in respect to answer- 
iny their prayer. 

Here it is safe to say that God never delays to answer 
prayer without some good reason. He could not delay 

from mere caprice. On the other hand he may delay 

the blessing sought, for the purpose of holding it before 
the suppliant's mind till he shall better appreciate itB 
worth, and his own dependence on God alone for it, and 
that he may accept it more gratefully and prize it more 
adequately when it comes. The reasons for delay may 
often lie in this direction ; but in the present case of 
Jacob we must look elsewhere, since in his fearful 
emergency this particular reason is scarcely supposable. 
His case was so urgent and involved interests so dear 
and so near to his very soul that his mind could 
scarce need to be sharpened to more intense desire or 
impressed with a deeper sense of dependence. 

Again, God often holds the suppliant in suspense for 
the sake of throwing him upon self-examination. It 
may be simply indispensable both for the good of the 
suppliant and for the honor of God that he should be 
put to the deepest self-searching, to compel reflection 
and consideration for the purpose of convicting him of 
some sin that must needs be seen, confessed, repented 
of and put utterly away. We must not overlook the 
great fact that when God grants signal blessings in an- 
swer to any man's prayer, it will be taken as a tacit in- 
dorsement on God's part of this man's spiritual state. 
It will be considered as God's testimony that he is not 
" regarding iniquity in his heart " — that there are no 
iniquities palpable to the world and present to the 
man's own consciousness — indulged and not condemned 
and forsaken. On this principle it often happens that 
God must needs compel the praying soul to the most 



THE LAW OF PREVAILING PRAYER. 143 

thorough heart-searching and to the most absolute and 
complete renunciation of known sin, before he can hon- 
orably and safely bestow signal blessings. 

If now we place this obvious principle of God's spir- 
itual administration alongside of the w T ell-known facts 
of Jacob's history, we shall readily see reasons, ap- 
parently all-sufficient, for this long delay and this re- 
markable struggle of prayer before the blessing was 
given. The Lord was searching his servant and im- 
pressing some great principles of practical duty upon 
his mind under circumstances well adapted to insure 
very thorough reformation. 

When Jacob at length prevailed and the Lord blessed 
him there, the crisis was past, and the danger really 
over. It was only for the Lord to put forth his finger 
and touch the heart of Esau : — then the revenge and 
murderous rage of the Esau that was, gave place to fra- 
ternal kindness and sympathy. We read, "Esau ran 
to meet Jacob and embraced him and fell on his neck 
and kissed him; and they wept" (Gen. 33: 4). The 
result therefore was far more and better than a mere 
escape with life from Esau's murderous purpose. It 
was the reconciliation of long alienated brothers. At 
least it secured one precious scene of fraternal sympa- 
thy and love. We read little of Esau's subsequent 

life. The brothers met at the death-bed and grave of 
their father (Gen. 35 : 29) ; perhaps their paths never 
came in contact again. 

The scenes of Mahanaim have afforded to the godly 
of all future ages some new light on the great subject 
of prayer. This was the first strong decisive case on 
record of prevalence in prayer. Abraham interceded 
long for Sodom ; but with no further result than to 
show that God was very condescending to hear such 
prayer, yet that the thing asked could not be 

granted. Here is a case of positive victory — a real 

prevailing with God, reached, however, only after a 
most remarkable struggle. It is a great advance in the 
revealed science of prayer to have a case so illustrative 
as this of the great laws of prevailing prayer. 

Jacob and Josejih. 

The group of historic incidents in which Jacob and 



144 JACOB AND JOSEPH. 

Joseph were prominent actors is eventful and striking ; 
in some points without a parallel in human history. 
If it were fiction, a mere drama, wrought out by some 
gifted imagination, it could not fail to command the 
admiration of men as a most finished plot, a wonderful 
outline of strange varieties of human character. Truth 
is sometimes " stranger than fiction " : and the careful 
reader of this narrative will testify, far more instructive 
and impressive. 

The points of chief value will be readily embraced 
under the following heads : 

I. The striking developments of personal character 
in the case of Jacob, Joseph, and his brethren. 

II. The hand of God in this history, manifested in 
two respects : (a.) In the suffering and moral trial of 
the righteous: (b.) In his overruling control of the 
wicked to bring forth abounding good from their wick- 
edness. 

III. The divine plan and purpose in locating the 
birth of the great Hebrew nation in such contact with 
Egypt. 

IV. Egyptian history and life, studied in connection 
with this sacred narrative as affording confirmation of 
its truthfulness. 

I. The reader of Gen. 34 and 35 and 37 and 38 will 
see that the ten older brethren of Joseph were "hard 
boys." The sacred historian must have been quite 
willing to give this impression, else he would not have 
recorded Reuben's incest with his father's concubine 
(35 : 22), nor Judah's criminal connection with a sup- 
posed harlot who proved to be his own daughter-in-law 
(Gen. 38), nor the pitiless cruelty of Simeon and Levi 
when stirred up to revenge the dishonor done to their 
sister Dinah (Gen. 34). Especially do the worst ele- 
ments of depraved character appear in their treatment 
of their younger brother Joseph. The narrative (Gen. 
37) is brief; gives facts without comments; but what 
facts! Joseph was young and very simple-hearted. 
Up to the point where the history introduces him, he 
had been trained in a religious home — which seems 
scarcely to have been the case with the ten older 
sons. Their shepherd life took them into distant parts 
of the country, and seems practically to have removed 
them much of the time from home and its domestic in- 



DEVELOPMENTS OF CHARACTER. 145 

fluences. Unfortunately the domestic influences of 
that polygamous home were by no means so wholesome 
as a religious home ought to furnish. Envy and jeal- 
ousy were stimulated into fearful strength. 

Joseph was sent to help the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah. 
Painfully impressed by their misdeeds, he reported 
them to his father. The special love of this aged father 
for Joseph, manifested in the "coat of many colors " 
(really a long tunic reaching to the wrists and ankles) 
occasioned more rankling jealousy. Finally, Joseph's 
remarkable dreams which his simplicity related with- 
out apparently a thought of giving offense, brought 
their animosity to its climax. Soon Joseph is thrown 
into their power. They see him coming and conspire 
to take his life. " Come, J (say they) " let us slay him 
and cast him into some pit, and we will say, "Some 
evil beast hath devoured him ; and we shall see what 
will become of his dreams." We are not told which of 
them suggested this murderous purpose. Reuben, the 
eldest brother, was the first to protest. His plan w T as 
that they should cast him alive into some pit; and 
then in their absence he could take him out and return 
him safely to his father. They consented; stripped 
him of his new coat, and cast him into a pit without 
water. [These pits were dug in that poorly watered 
country for the sake of getting water for their cattle.] 
Then they sat down to eat bread, perhaps compliment- 
ing themselves that they had not murdered him, but 
had shown their power and for the present had put 
him out of their way. Manifestly their consciences 
were dead to that sense of guilt which a few years later 
forced them to say, " We are verily guilty concerning 
our brother in that we saw the anguish of his soul 
when he besought us and we would not hear" (Gen. 
42 : 21). Just then a caravan of Ishmaelites and Mid- 
ianites came in sight, moving toward Egypt, and 
Judah came to the rescue with the proposition to take 
up Joseph and sell him, to be taken as a slave to Egypt. 
With some manly feeling he says — " What profit is it 
if we slay our brother and conceal his blood ? Come, 
let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, and let not our hand 
be upon him, for he is our brother and our flesh ; and 
his brethren were content." Reuben's better quali- 
ties come up to view again when he returned to the pit, 



146 JACOB AND JOSEPH. 

hoping to rescue his brother — but found no Joseph 
there ! " He rent his clothes " ; he came to his breth- 
ren exclaiming, "The child is not; — and I — whither 
shall I go?" 

In the next scene these brethren were if possible 
more heartless still. It commonly happens that one 
crime demands another and yet another to conceal the 
first. So in this case, the next thing is to deceive 
their father even though it torture him with the ag- 
ony of supposing his favorite son devoured by some 
evil beast. They kill a kid ; stain Joseph's coat with 
its blood; and then send it to their father, saying, 
"This have we found; see whether it be thy son's coat 
or not." There was no mistaking the coat, and Jacob's 
grief is heart-breaking. Remarkably it is said that 
" all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort 
him, but he refused to be comforted " ; and he said, " I 
will go down into the grave to my son mourning. 

Thus his father wept for him."- How easily those 

sons might have said : " Father, we have sinned against 
God and against thee; but Joseph is not slain by lions; 
we sold him into Egypt! You may live to see him 
again." But not even Reuben or Judah had con- 
science, and truthfulness, and filial affection enough to 
reveal the guilty secret. Miserable comforters were 
they all to their father's broken heart ! 

Leaving Jacob to long years of bitterest grief, we fol- 
low the fortunes of Joseph. From this point the thread 
of the story takes him into Egypt a slave. Sold to 
Potiphar, an officer under Pharaoh, it soon became ap- 
parent that the Lord was with him and made every 
thing prosper under his hand. He rises rapidly in the 
confidence of his master; is put in charge of all his 
house — but here springs up a new trial. Joseph is 
beautiful in person and amiable in manners. Pot- 
iphar's wife, lewd and shameless, tempts him with so- 
licitations to adultery. Joseph's bearing in this case 
was worthy to be put on permanent record to pass 
down through all future generations to the end of time, 
a perfect model of both virtue and wisdom — the virtue 
that resists seductive temptation with unwavering 
firmness; and the wisdom that comprehends and ap- 
plies the perfect methods of resisting temptation. 



JOSEPH IN EGYPT. 147 

Joseph did not dally with his tempter ; did not suffer 
the temptation to gather new force, but met it in- 
stantly with the strongest considerations possible — 
u How can I do this great wickedness and sin against 
God /" God, said he to himself, is my best friend ; I am 
his servant. He has stood by me through all my trials 
and given me this great prosperity; his pure eye is on 
me; I can not do this great wickedness against 
him ! The sense of a present God settled the ques- 
tion forever. There was indeed another line of consid- 
erations — his obligations to the husband of this lewd 
woman. Potiphar had trusted him most entirely ; shall 

he abuse this trust? Never. Thus Joseph's course 

was at once decided. But this vile woman persisted in 
her solicitations, till at length, maddened by her fail- 
ure, she plotted his death. She laid hold of his gar- 
ment ; he escaped leaving it in her hands. With this 
for her proof she accuses Joseph of the crime of which 
she alone was guilty. Joseph is thrown into prison — 
because of his virtue and not because of any crime. 
Of course the Lord was with him still, and again 
Joseph rises in the favor and confidence of those in 
power; is put in charge of all matters in the prison, 
and thus the Lord turned this great trial to account to 
bring Joseph before Pharaoh. Long was the trial ; the 
story of his relations to the chief butler and the chief 
baker is in point chiefly as showing how ungratefully 
the butler could forget his imprisoned friend and pro- 
long his imprisonment. But the hour of deliverance 
came at last. Pharaoh's two dreams impressed and dis- 
turbed his mind so much that he summoned all his 
wise men to his help—but in vain. At this opportune 
moment the chief butler remembers Joseph. He 
should have spoken of him to the king two years be- 
fore ; but engrossed with his own prosperity, he forgot 
his prison benefactor till this time. Joseph comes to 
the help of the king. His first answer is beautifully 
modest and fragrant with piety. "I have heard of 
thee, said the king, that thou canst understand a 
dream to interpret it." Joseph replies : " It is not in 
me ; God shall give Pharaoh an answer of peace " (Gen. 
41 : 16). The dreams are interpreted to signify seven 
years of overflowing plenty, followed by seven of ex- 
treme famine throughout all the land. Joseph suggests 



148 JACOB AND JOSEPH. 

to the king to store up the excess of the plentiful 
years against the deficiencies of the famine years. 
The king sees the wisdom of this suggestion and at 
once appoints Joseph to this responsibility; in fact, 
sets him over all Egypt, save only in the honors of the 
throne. 

At this point the historic thread brings Jacob and his 
sons in Canaan to view again. We are not told whether 
they had the seven years of exuberant plenty there, but 
the years of famine were there in terrible power. They 
were soon breadless. The father hears that there is 
corn in Egypt ; so he sends ten of his sons — all that are 
with him save Benjamin — to get corn. It was to be 
brought on the backs of their asses, and therefore it was 
wise to send them all together. 

The scenes that follow are told with masterly simplic- 
ity. Joseph knows them; they do not recognize him : 
What policy shall he pursue ? Why, we may perhaps 
ask, why does he not make himseff known to them at 
once? Why does he treat them so roughly; accuse 
them of being spies; throw them all into prison for 
three days ; propose to keep them all confined save one 
arid send him back after Benjamin ; but finally com- 
promises the matter by taking Simeon as a hostage, 
binding him before their eyes, and then consenting that 
the rest may go home and bring Benjamin down as the 
condition of Simeon's release ? Why does he put their 
money into the mouth of each man's sack of corn ? Why 
this long delay, and these searching, harassing prelim- 
inaries ? 

It was not that Joseph was hard-hearted and rather 
enjoyed using his power and taking some revenge — 
nothing of this sort. It is indeed said in the first stage 
of this interview — "Joseph remembered the dreams 
which he dreamed of them " (Gen. 42 : 9), and thereupon 
said, " Ye are spies ; to see the nakedness of the land 
are ye come." But this only shows that his policy was 
settled upon the spur of the moment. He saw what he 
needed to accomplish and laid his plans accordingly. 
The whole narrative shows that, so far from being void 
of fraternal feeling and hard-hearted, in fact it tasked 
his firmness of character to the utmost to suppress his 
emotions sufficiently to carry out his purpose. His 
main purpose was to bring them to thorough repentance. 



JOSEPH IN EGYPT. 149 

For this end he must needs throw their thought back 
upon their great sin and bring the heavy pressure of 
present calamity upon them with all its suggestive 
power to show them that God was taking them in hand 
for that wickedness. He also wished to see how they 
felt toward their father and toward Benjamin. Their 
feeling toward both the father and his youngest son 
would be an index of their penitence for their great sin 
toward himself. 

Joseph was a man of consummate wisdom. Few men 
have ever lived who understood human nature better 
than he, or could plan better for a given effect. Conse- 
quently we shall not miss greatly if we infer his design 
from the actual effect. When we see what he accom- 
plished, we are reasonably safe in saying — This is what 
he aimed to do. 

Observe now that the first scene had not fully trans- 
pired ere he heard them saying one to another, "We 
are verily guilty concerning our brother in that we saw 
the anguish of his soul when he besought us and we 
would not hear ; therefore is this distress come upon us.'' 
And Reuben answered them (i*. e. interposed at that 
point) saying. Spake I not unto you, saying, Do not sin 
against the child; and ye would not hear? Therefore, 

behold also, his blood is required.'' Joseph saw that 

his scheme was taking effect : their consciences were 
at work. How his own heart must have throbbed! 
Accordingly we read — "He turned himself about from 
them and wept.'' But the work is not yet complete : so 
he brushed away the tears and "returned to them and 
took from them Simeon and bound him before their 
eyes." Why he chose Simeon is not indicated. Per- 
haps — not to say probably — he was the leading spirit 
in the cruel scenes thirteen years before. We remem- 
ber that Simeon and Levi lea off in that bloody affray 
with the men of Shechem. However this may be, he 
was the eldest after Reuben; and Reuben, though a 
coarse, rough nature, was on the side of mercy toward 
the abused Joseph. Simeon, therefore, is chosen for the 
hostage, to be kept in close confinement while the rest 
are dismissed to go home. Simeon will have abundant 
time to think over the guilty deeds of that dreadful 
past ! Let us hope that it brought him to genuine re- 
pentance. 



150 JACOB AND JOSEPH. 

The narrative details the return of the nine brethren 
to their father's house ; how they told their story there ; 
how Jacob rebuked them for disclosing their youngest 
brother ; how he struggled desperately against his man- 
ifest destiny; how he said — Benjamin shall never go 
down into Egypt ; how Reuben interposed in his rough 
way, saying to his father : " Slay my two sons if I bring 
not Benjamin back to thee" — as if he could not see 
that murdering two of his grandchildren would be in- 
finitely far from helping the matter or affording the 
least relief. With better good sense and a more just ap- 
preciation of his father's feelings, Judah pled with his 
father:- -We shall all die of starvation unless we go 
down to Egypt for corn: we must take Benjamin with 
us — else we get no corn. " Send the lad with me ; I 
will be surety for him. Of my hand shalt thou require 
him : if I bring him not unto thee and set him before 
thee, then let me bear the blame forever" (Gen. 43 : 8-10). 

The heart of their father Israel comes to view here — 

yielding to the inevitable necessity; w T isely getting up 
a liberal present of the best fruits of their land ; double 
money, to return what came home with them in their 
sack's mouth, and to buy again. Saddest of all he gave 
up his dear Benjamin, and then with many a prayer 
he sent them to Egypt a second time: "And God Al- 
mighty give you mercy before the man that he may 
send away your other brother and Benjamin: If I be 

bereaved of my children, I am bereaved." But he did 

not see the deep thoughts of God in these trying scenes, 
and perhaps he had not yet fully learned how wise and 
safe it is to trust Almighty God to bring out his own 
results in his own way 1 He will learn more by and 

Events thicken ; the final consummation hastens on. 
They are in Egypt again and stand before Joseph. His 
quick eye sees his beloved brother Benjamin among 
them. At once he gives orders to the ruler of his house 
to prepare a dinner for all these men and to bring them 
all into his house. A deeper fear seizes upon them : 
what, say they, can this mean ? What new charges, 
what prosecutions, what fresh dangers, are coming now ? 
They meet the Steward at the door and tell him their 
story about the returned money. The recognition of 
God in his reply seems strange for an Egyptian — unless 



JOSEPH IN EGYPT. 151 

we suppose that Joseph had given him the words. He 
said, " Peace be to you ; fear not ; your God and the God 
of your fathers hath given you treasure in your sacks. 
I had your money " (Gen. 43 : 23). " And he brought 
Simeon out to them " — which might well have given 

some relief to their burdened hearts. The dinner 

hour approaches; they are to eat with the lord of the 
land. They get their presents ready ; and when Joseph 
appeared " they bowed themselves to him to the earth." 
The historian is careful to mention this for its bearing 
as the fulfillment of that long past dream of the boy 
Joseph. With the true politeness of profound sincerity 
Joseph inquires about his father : " Is your father well — 
the old man of whom ye spake ? Is he yet alive ? " 
" And they answered : Thy servant our father is in good 
health ; he is yet alive ; and [again] they bowed down 

their heads and made obeisance." Now his eye falls 

on Benjamin, his own mother's son, and he asks — " Is 
this your younger brother of whom ye spake unto me ? 

God be gracious unto thee my son." Ah, but Joseph's 

heart is too full; "he made haste, for his bowels did 
yearn upon his brother ; and he sought where to weep, 
and he entered into his chamber and wept there." But 
the time has not come yet to reveal himself; the search- 
ing ordeal through which he must needs make his 
brethren pass has not fully done its work ; so Joseph 
washes off the tears ; refrains himself from shedding 
more, and orders the food set on. The brethren of 
Joseph had probably a rather pleasant time — only it 
seemed strange to them that they were seated by age 
from the eldest to the youngest and Benjamin had a 
five-fold mess ! How comes it that the lord of Egypt 
knows so much about us ? They can not see. 

They are getting ready now for home ; their sacks are 
filled with corn again, and again the money is put back 
into each sack's mouth, and worst of all, Joseph's silver 
cup is slipped into the mouth of Benjamin's sack. Ere 
they are fairly out of the city Joseph posts his steward 
after them, abruptly charging them with having un- 
gratefully stolen his lord's silver cup. Consciously in- 
nocent and deeply indignant, they are rash enough to 
say — Let the man in whose sack it is found die, and take 
all the rest of us for slaves ! How were they amazed 
and overwhelmed when the cup was found in Benja- 



152 JACOB AND JOSEPH. 

min's sack ! They rent their clothes in bitterness of 
heart, and all return to the city. Judah comes to the 
front here; it is " Judah and his brethren" who come 
to Joseph's house, and Judah who makes the plea in 
behalf of Benjamin. The historian is careful to say 
again that when they met Joseph u they fell before him 
on the ground." He also remarks that Joseph was yet 
in his house, having remained there ever since the 
caravan left in the early morning, too full of thought 

on this subject to turn to any other business. Now 

he expects to learn how they feel toward Benjamin and 
toward their aged father. He must be sure they are all 
right on these points before he lifts the vail and shows 

them himself. They are brought back as criminals 

before him. With a sternness that is not at all in his 
heart but in his assumed manner only, he says — What 
deed is this that ye have done? Were ye not aware 
that I have the power of positive and certain divina- 
tion ? Judah is in deep perplexity — but he speaks 

frankly: "What shall we say unto my lord? or how 
shall we clear ourselves ? God hath found out the in- 
iquity of thy servants " — which words can not, it would 
seeip, refer to any iniquity in the matter of the silver 
cup, but must have referred to the long past crime of 
the brethren toward Joseph. He can not say less than 
that they will all become the slaves of Joseph, all in- 
cluding even Benjamin. No, replies Joseph ; I want 

only the guilty man, Benjamin ; all the rest of you may 

go in peace to your father ! Now the crisis so long 

dreaded has come. A terrible responsibility falls upon 
Judah. With wonderful simplicity, with most touching 
filial affection toward his father, and with masterly skill 
he rises to the moral sublimity of the occasion. He 
comes near to Joseph and begins his great plea. Every 
reader must study it. We shall need to go far to find 
more touching eloquence, a more masterly setting forth 
of the facts of the case including the whole story from 
the beginning to the end. The case of the aged father 
and of his two younger sons left him by his best beloved 
wife — put in the aged patriarch's own words — ran thus: 
" Ye know that my wife bear me two sons, and the one 
went out from me, and I said — Surely he is torn in 
pieces, and I have not seen him since ; and if ye take 
this also from me, and mischief befall him, ye shall bring 



JOSEPH IN EGYPT. 153 

down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave. Now 
therefore when I come to thy servant my father and 
the lad be not with us ; (seeing that his life is bound 
up in the lad's life) — when he shall see that the lad is 
not with us he will die; and thy servants will bring 
down the gray hairs of our father with sorrow to the 
grave. I said to him, If I bring not Benjamin back, I 
will bear the blame forever. Now therefore I pray 
thee, let me abide instead of Benjamin, the bond-servant 
of my lord, and let him go back to his father. For how 
shall I go to my father and the lad be not with me ? 
Lest peradventure I see the evil that shall come on my 

father." This was more than Joseph could bear. He 

could refrain himself no longer; the tears would come; 
the swelling emotions must have vent. Joseph cried : 
" Have every man away from me save these men of 
Canaan." The proof of their love to their aged father 
and to Benjamin is unmistakable; Joseph is satisfied. 
They are penitent for their long past crime against him, 
and he can therefore at length break the secret and 
show himself their long lost brother! How do their 
ears tingle as they hear him say — " I am Joseph : Doth 
my father yet live ? " The first shock is almost stun- 
ning : they can not answer him, for they are troubled 
at his presence. More kind words and the kindest pos- 
sible manner are now' in place. " Joseph said to his 
brethren, Come near to me, I pray you ; and they came 
near." Again he says — "I am Joseph, your brother, 
whom ye sold into Egypt." Then w r ith a turn w T hich 
evinces the exquisite tenderness of his heart, he begs 
them " not to be grieved nor angry with themselves ; " 
but to think rather of the design of God in permitting 
and providentially shaping this wonderful series of 
events. " God did send me before you to preserve life. 
There are five more years of famine yet to come ; God 
sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the 
earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. 
So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God." 
The best thing he could say under just those circum- 
stances to soothe their mind, to assure them of his full 
forgiveness and to give them consolation in place of the 
agitation, fear, and remorse that so nearly overwhelmed 
their spirits. 

Arrangements for the future are soon made. Joseph 



154 JACOB AND JOSEPH. 

assures them that the best of Egypt's land shall be 
given them, and insists that they hasten home and 
bring their aged father and their little ones — every 
thing they have — down to Egypt, because five more 
years of famine are to follow. Egyptian wagons — un- 
known to Jacob's household — are sent, and the brethren 
are hastened off. Were they not a happy band ? The 
great agony of fear is past ; the surgings of anxiety and 
solicitude have ceased; the pungent convictions of that 
dread crime long ago against their younger brother 
have done their work, and wrought out " the peaceable 
fruits of righteousness." This is a wonderful crisis in 
their life history. Let us hope that most if not all of 
them found God through these fiery trials and these 
penitent tears ! 

They are home again. The first thing is to break 
this strange secret to their father. They make just two 
points : " Joseph yet alive ; " " Joseph Governor over all 
the land of Egypt." It was too much — was too good to 
be believed. The English version has it, " Jacob's heart 
fainted." Better — " Jacob's heart remained cold, for he 
believed them not." It stirred no joyous and warm 
emotions, for he could not believe it. But when they 
told' him all the words of Joseph, and especially when 
he saw the wagons which Joseph had sent to carry him, 
then his spirit rose ; his heart waxed warm ; he said : 
"It is enough; Joseph my son is yet alive; I will go and 
see him before I die." 

Beersheba, the old home of his father Isaac, lay on 
his route. He stopped there and offered sacrifice to the 
God of his father Isaac. The night following the Lord 
met him in vision, saying, " I am thy God and the God 
of thy father; fear not to go down into Egypt, for I will 
there make of thee a great nation : I will go down with 
thee into Egypt and will bring thee up again ; and Jo- 
seph shall put his hand upon thine eyes " — i. e. to close 

them in death. How tenderly appreciative of the 

circumstances and of Jacob's need was this vision of 
Beersheba! Such are God's blessed ways with his 
children. He can not send them into scenes of special 
danger or of critical interest, without some special man- 
ifestations of his presence. 



god's hand in this history. 155 

II. We are to notice the hand of God in this history 
in its twofold bearings : 

1. As active in the sufferings and moral trial of the 
virtuous ; 

2. As manifested in his overruling control of the 
wicked to bring forth from their wickedness abounding 
good. 

1. As active in the sufferings and moral trial of the 
virtuous. — —The most cursory reader of this story will 
see in it a striking case of the sufferings of innocence. 
Joseph, envied and hated for no fault of his ; coming 
near to being murdered by his own brothers, and really 
sold into slavery — a slavery prospectively life-long and 
in a distant, unknown land; torn away from every 
thing dear in home, at the age of seventeen : — this 
surely was innocence subjected to the sternest suf- 
fering. 

How do such things happen under the government 
of God? When they do happen, what do they prove ? 

a. Negatively : They prove that all the suffering in 
this world can not be retribution for sin. There may be 
great suffering which can not in any true sense be the 
punishment of great crime. The greatest sufferers are 
not necessarily and always the greatest sinners. Suffer- 
ing is not graduated to crime. This lesson Job's 

three friends were slow to learn. Even Job himself 
seems not to have learned it thoroughly, but was 
groping toward it, under the lessons of his own con- 
scious experience. It may not be amiss to suggest 
here that Job and his friends reasoned without the light 
which this history of Joseph would have given them if 
they had ever heard or read it. They either lived be- 
fore Joseph, or too remote from these scenes to hear or in 
any way learn the lessons they teach. 

b. Positively this case illustrates some of the ends 
which God aims to secure by permitting the sufferings 
of the good; e. g. to discipline them to patience under 
suffering, and to trust in God in the midst of darkness 
and in spite of it. Joseph's slavery and prison-life in 
Egypt would have been simply miserable without this 
patience and this trust in the Lord his God. Suppose 
he had given himself up to fretting and chafing and 
dashing his head against the strong walls of his prison 
and to wrenching off the fetters with which they "hurt 



156 JACOB AND JOSEPH. 

his feet " (Ps. 105 : 18) ; — What could have come of such 
adjustment of one's self to dark providences? Cer- 
tainly not the sweet and blessed discipline which he 
did in fact get from his afflictions; certainly not the 
favor and the blessing of his God. Every thing in the 
future as before his eye was dark enough ; but he knew 
there was a God of loving kindness above — a God who 
made no mistakes, yet whose purposes were often too 
deep for afflicted man to fathom, and therefore a God 
whom his children should learn to trust as certainly 
doing all things well. 

Again ; the case serves to reveal God's pity and his 
love in that he goes with his children into their slave- 
life and into their prison-life with such smiles of favor, 
such tokens of his presence, as may well make them 
joyful in the most terrible affliction. As Paul and 
Silas prayed and sang praises within the cold, desolate 
walls of a prison while yet smarting under the Roman 
scourge, and with perhaps some prospect of sufferings 
more severe when another day should dawn ; so Joseph 
found the Lord with him when he reached Egypt a 
slave; with him when cast into prison because he vir- 
tuously repelled a foul temptation to crime. God was 
there, proving to his servant Joseph that no surround- 
ings are so dark that God's manifested presence will 
not make them light — that no sufferings and no be- 
reavements are so severe that God can not throw his 
smile upon the sufferer and fill his soul with overflow- 
ing joy! 

Yet again ; this lesson teaches that God uses means 
apparently rough and stern to prepare his servants for 
higher responsibilities and more signal blessings. We 
can not say what Joseph would have been if he had re- 
mained in the bosom of his doting father's home 
through all those years from seventeen to thirty, in- 
stead of being in God's school of suffering and trial; 
but it is safe to say that he made rapid strides forward 
in this school of God — in his knowledge of human na- 
ture; in his quick and manifest sympathy with every 
one in trouble ; in his skill to gain the confidence of 
those about and above him; in his capacity for busi- 
ness ; and not least in his living piety and his humble 
walk with God. His surroundings threw him roughly 
upon his own resources, and at the same time sweetly 



157 

upon God's resources; and in consequence he rose, as 
few men have even been fit to rise, from slave-life and 
from prison-life, to be the actuary of a great kingdom — 
the almoner of bread and of life to the nations of the then 
civilized world ; and also to become one of the most ex- 
alted and spotless characters of all history. Are not the 
ways of God truly wonderful ? 

The ways of God toward Jacob must not be overlooked. 
We need not debate the question how far his sufferings 
were those of innocence, and how far he was criminally 
responsible for the lack of moral culture and the power 
of fearful depravity in his sons. Be this as it may, it 
was hard for him to lose Joseph — the one son who was 
a comfort to his heart among so many who were quite 
otherwise. Even after thirteen years his heart seems 
still to be sore with that great sorrow, so that when his 
ten sons say that Benjamin must go with them to 
Egypt, he exclaims, "All these things are against 
me " ! And when at length he is compelled to consent, 
his words indicate that he bows to an inexorable fate 
rather than yields in sweet trust to a divine hand be- 
lieved to be wise and kind, though utterly and inex- 
plicably mysterious; — "If I am bereaved of my chil- 
dren, I am bereaved." 

Jacob lived to see the clouds of darkness lifted and 
rolled away. He lived to learn that all those things 
were not against him by any means, but were in fact 
shaped of God to save his great household alive 
through a seven years' famine ; and (what is far more 
than even this) — were designed of God for the salvation 
of those sons of his whose wickedness had brought these 
sorrows upon him, and whom God had faithfully taken 
in hand to bring them to repentance. Had he not 
learned ere this that it was always safe to trust in his 
fathers God? Had not the Lord said to him, " I will 
surely do thee good " ? As to being " bereaved of his 
children," was not the covenant very definite : "A nation 
and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings 

shall come out of thy loins " ? (Gen. 35 : 11). This 

discipline of the aged patriarch was sharp but whole- 
some. He might have said, " In faithfulness hast thou 
afflicted me." The clouds of life's stormy day cleared 
before sunset. It would be pleasant to hear, if we might, 



158 JACOB AND JOSEPH. 

the experiences of his closing years when he came to 
understand God's ways and to reap the blessed fruits of 
such chastening sorrows. 

These methods and ends of God in the discipline and 
culture of his people reach onward into eternity. The 
faithful here are the rulers there (Mat. 25 : 21). Those 
who take God's discipline kindly here and turn it to 
best account according to his thought and will, have 
their reward above. It is not needful that we know in 
their details what the heavenly responsibilities are, and 
what the dignities and the honors of those who have 
been faithful over a few things here ; but we are safe 
in the belief that earthly discipline and culture are not 

lost attainments as to the after life. -As one short day 

transferred Joseph from the prison-house of the kingdom 
to the lordship of that kingdom-, so one day is long 
enough for the transfer of many a humble, suffering 
saint of God from dungeons of darkness and pain to 
palaces of royalty and bliss. In the story of Joseph 
these great truths of God's administration with his peo- 
ple were breaking forth upon the minds of men by 
most interesting stages of progress. 

2. From these lessons in God's ways with the right- 
eous, we turn to other lessons pertaining to his ways 
with the wicked. This history of Joseph shows how skill- 
fully and mightily God manages the wicked, making 
their wickedness work (wholly against their purpose) to 
evolve abounding good. 

We have seen how Joseph directed the thought of 
his brethren to these ways and designs of God. "'Be 
not angry with yourselves that ye sold me hither ; for 
God did send me before you to preserve life." " So now 
it was not ye that sent me hither, but God " (Gen. 45 : 
5, 7, 8). And again seventeen years later, after Jacob's 
death, his brethren being apprehensive lest Joseph 
might then relapse into revenge, he said to them; 
"Fear not, for am I in the place of God? But as for 
you, ye thought evil against me ; but God meant it for 
good, to bring to pass as it is this day, to save much 
people alive (Gen. 50 : 19, 20). We should quite un- 
der-estimate Joseph's knowledge of human nature and 
his sense of moral distinctions if we were to press his 



GOD OVERRULES SIN FOR GOOD. 159 

words to mean that God's agencies in those crimes su- 
perseded theirs ; lifted off their responsibilities and left 

them essentially faultless. The reason why Joseph's 

remarks took this turn seems to have been this. He 
saw that conviction for sin had done its vital work in 
their souls; that they were apparently penitent and 
leaning toward the most severe self-condemnation — at 
a stage where it was both safe and kind to turn their 
attention to God's hand as evolving good from their sin. 
In so far as we can have confidence in Joseph's judg- 
ment as to their moral state, his words afford proof that 
his brethren were truly penitent, and at a stage where 
consolation might properly be suggested as some relief 
to their mental anguishc 

The use which God made of the sin of Joseph's breth- 
ren exemplifies his consummate, far-reaching wisdom. 
He knew all the future. He saw the coming famine ; 
knew how to advance Joseph to the lordship of all 
Egypt, and to put him there just in time to garner up 
the surplus of seven years of overflowing abundance, 
and then dispense these stores of corn for the sustenance 
of thousands less provident throughout all Egypt and 
all adjacent countries. The resources of God's provi- 
dence, guided by such wisdom, are simply boundless. 

What can he not do when he wills to do it ? The 

case is equally demonstrative of his love, Mark how he 
bends the great powers of his infinite being to the pro- 
duction of good, to multiply the means of happiness. 
This view of his character is doubly, yea infinitely 
precious when studied in its developments in a world, 
or rather a universe, with sin in it If the Lord were 
obliged to say — I must content myself with the co-oper- 
ation of the good, the unfallen, turning their agency to 
best account for the promotion of happiness ; but as to 
the wicked, they are beyond my reach ; I can do noth- 
ing with them ; the evil they do must be endured as so 
much dead loss to the universe, never to be of any ser- 
vice toward virtue and happiness— the case would be, 
so far, one of unrelieved sadness. We may bless the 
name of our God that his resources of wisdom and power 
and the outgoings of his love are not thus limited. No 
indeed ; some good results will be extorted from even 
those horrible crimes of Joseph's brethren. Even the 
devil's wickedness in which he exults as availing to 
8 



160 JACOB AND JOSEPH. 

frustrate God's plans and to shake his throne, he will 
find at length to his everlasting confusion and shame, 
has been made, by the over-mastering wisdom, power, 
and love of God, to subserve the very cause he thought 
to break down, and to break down every thing he had 
vainly hoped to build up! For is not God wiser and 
mightier than the devil ? The final result of the con- 
flict will prove it. But it is in place here to note that 

this story of Joseph's brethren and of God's over-ruling 
hand in their case was shedding some rays of light on 
these previously dark problems, and therefore w r as in- 
dicating progress in the revelations of God and of his 
ways with sinful men. 

Nor let us overlook this one other point — that the 
case evinces the consummate skill of God in managing 
the free moral activities of men without the least in- 
fringement upon their free agency and moral responsi- 
bility. We see this in the way they went into their 
sin — purely of their own free purpose — after their own 
envious and proud heart, although God had purposes to 
answer by means of this very sin. We see it still more, 
if possible, in the means he used to bring them to repent- 
ance ; how he put his great hook into their jaws and 
brought them down to Egypt; took the pride out of 
them; pressed them wuth one calamity after another 
till they came to feel very weak before Almighty God; 
aroused their long slumbering consciences and kept their 
thought upon that long past, almost forgotten crime 
against Joseph — till at length they seem to have become 
thoroughly penitent. Only by legitimate means and 
influences, and only by such a use of these as still left 
their moral activities under their own responsible con- 
trol — were these grand results reached. Thus we may 

take lessons in the masterly skill with which God's 
agencies interwork with man's, effective to the result 
he proposes because God is more and mightier than 
man. 

III. Taking a broader range of view, we may next 
study the purposes of God in locating the birth of the He- 
brew nation in the land of Egypt. 

Since God's purposes never come to nought but are 
always accomplished perfectly, the ends he has in view 
being surely secured, it is safe to reason backward from 



ANCIENT EGYPT CONFIRMS MOSES. 161 

known results to original purposes. It would amount 
practically to the same thing if we were to ask — What 
great results were actually secured by locating his peo- 
ple in Egypt when and as he did; by shaping their 
history as he did, and by bringing them out at length 
with his high hand and outstretched arm? 

1. In answering these questions we may note that 
Egypt in that age stood at the summit of the world's 
civilization, a fully organized kingdom, a great and 
highly cultured people. There is most ample proof that 
Egypt was then eminent above any other nation in learn- 
ing, wisdom, science, and art ; in jurisprudence, and in 
the administration of law: in industry and in wealth: 
in short, in all the main appliances and results of a 
high civilization. The antiquities of Ancient Egypt 
are the marvel of our times. Her temples, pyramids. 
and obelisks; her paintings and works of art. have come 
down to our age in most wonderful preservation, living 
witnesses to her ancient greatness. There was no other 
kingdom on the face of the earth where a man like 
Moses could have been educated and trained to become 
the law-giver of the Hebrew nation, or where such a 
system of civil law as God gave his people by the hand 
of Moses could have taken its rise and could have been 
understood, accepted, -appreciated, and ultimately 
wrought into established usage and into the national 
life. We shall have occasion in its place to inquire 
how far the civil system given through Moses was bor- 
rowed from the Egyptian Code, and consequently how 
far the scenes of their Egyptian life prepared the way 
for the new national life instituted in the wilderness. 

2. The plan of transferring his people from their 
nomadic, pastoral life in Canaan, to a settled residence 
in Egypt provided scope for all those developments 
which we have been studying in the history of Jacob, 
Joseph, and his brethren. 

3. Yet more and greater developments of God's 
mighty hand were provided for in the deliverance of 
his people from their bondage in Egypt : in his judg- 
ments on Pharaoh and his land: in the destruction of 
his hosts in the Red Sea : in the wilderness life of Israel 
during forty years : and at length in their location in 
the land of promise. All these points will come under 
review in their order. 



162 JACOB AND JOSEPH. 



IV. Some notice should be taken of ancient Egypt as af- 
fording confirmation to the historic accuracy and truthfulness 
of Moses in Genesis. 

1. Moses assumes that Egypt had a king and a fully- 
organized government. The evidence of this from 
Egyptian history and antiquities is too abundant and 
accessible to need citation. 

2. Also that the people subsisted mainly by agricul- 
ture, not pasturage; that their soil was exceedingly 
fertile and the country one of great wealth. The facts 
on these points also are beyond question. The Nile 
has always made Egypt rich in soil and in agricul- 
tural productions. Its periodical inundations have sus- 
tained the fertility of that valley for thousands of 
years. Alternations of years of plenty with years of 
famine have been their common experience in all ages, 
though probably never so extreme and protracted as in 
the age of Joseph. 

3. The history by Moses records the fact that in the 
early stages of this great famine the lands passed over 
largely to the crown, but were leased to the farmers 
for £, certain portion (one-fifth) of the crops (Gen. 47 : 

20-26). Testimony from sources other than sacred 

proves these points. Herodotus was told by .the priests 
of Egypt that the king gave each Egyptian laborer a 
square piece of land of equal extent and collected from 
each a yearly rent. Diodorus states that all the land 
of Egypt belonged either to the king, the priests, or the 
military caste. Strabo says that the farmers and trades- 
men held their lands subject to rent. In the Egyptian 
sculptures as shown by Wilkinson, only kings, priests, 
and the military orders are represented as land-owners. 
[See " Hengstenberg and the Books of Moses/' pp. 
62-70.] 

4. The history by Moses makes an important excep- 
tion in the case of the priests. Being supported di- 
rectly from the royal treasury, they were not obliged to 
alienate their lands during the great famine and con- 
sequently continued to hold them (Gen. 47: 22). 
With this all profane testimony concurs. 

5. This fact implies an organized priesthood as a fa- 
vored and therefore powerful class in Egyptian so- 
ciety. Egyptian history confirms this and shows more- 



ANCIENT EGYPT CONFIRMS MOSES. 163 

over that they were not merely priests, performing re- 
ligious functions, but were the learned and scientific 
men of the nation ; had charge of education ; held in 
their body the art and the " wisdom " of the nation and 
performed largely the administrative functions of gov- 
ernment. " The thirty judges (says Drumann) priests 
of Heliopolis, Thebes, and Memphis, were maintained 
by the king, and without doubt, the sons of the priests 
also, all of whom over twenty years of age were given 
to the king as servants ; or, more correctly, to take the 
oversight of his affairs." " The ministers of the court 
were in Egypt the priests, just as the state was a The- 
ocracy, and the king was considered as the representa- 
tive and incarnation of the Godhead." (Hengstenberg, 

p. 68). It was by virtue of this usage that Joseph 

married into the class of the priesthood, Asenath his 
wife being a daughter of Potipherah priest of On (Gen. 

41 : 50). The reader will perhaps recall the striking 

analogy between the Egyptian system and the Hebrew 
Theocracy, particularly in the point that the ministers 
of religion were also ministers of civil law and promi- 
nent in its administration. The judges in the civil 
courts w r ere taken chiefly from the tribe of Levi. 

6. Joseph's arraignment of his brethren — " Ye are 
spies ; to see the nakedness of the land are ye come " — 
suggests an inquiry into the relations of Egypt to for- 
eign powers. The suspicions of Joseph obviously as- 
sume a consciousness of great liability to foreign in- 
vasion. Such was the fact ; and the reasons for it will 
readily appear. We have only to think of the power- 
ful tribes scattered over vast Arabia, the Hittites and 
other tribes of Canaan and of the regions North 
and East — all stalwart men, all poor and subsisting on 
precarious supplies, yet possessed of fleet animals — 
horses, dromedaries, camels — with which they were 
able to move masses of men with great celerity. Let 
such men see the tempting bait of corn in plenty in 
Egypt, and the marvel is how Egypt could protect her- 
self against sudden and formidable invasion. The 
monuments of her early history testify to her long and 
bloody wars with the Hittites and other tribes of West- 
ern Asia, often carrying the war into their country as 
a wiser policy no doubt than to stand behind her own 
walls on the defensive. Suffice it to sav here that 



164 JACOB AND JOSEPH. 

when those Asiatic countries were famishing for bread 
and it was well known there was corn enough in 
Egypt, the suspicion expressed by Joseph that those 
ten men were spies was not only natural but perhaps 
even a necessary measure of policy to satisfy the 
Egyptians. They must naturally apprehend danger 
though he might personally know that these men were 
harmless. 

7. Sacred history drops this incidental remark — 
"For every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyp- 
tians " (Gen. 46 : 34). To some extent this feeling was 
a natural outgrowth of their relations to the nomadic 
tribes of South-western Asia — to which we have re- 
cently referred. But there is some reason to suppose 
among them a certain special antipathy against the 
sheep, more intense than against any other domestic 
animal unless swine be an exception. They had so 
much respect for the cow that they made her and her 
species objects of worship. Although they attained 
great skill in the manufacture of linen, cotton, and silk, 
I meet with no allusion to wool. Woolen cloths are 
never found upon Egyptian mummies ; linen and cot- 
ton* were used. Some writers have supposed that 

shepherds were held in special abhorrence because their 
country had been conquered and ruled by a dynasty of 
shepherd kings from the North-east; but the precise 
date of their invasion and of their rule over Egypt is 
very much in doubt. 

8. Both Joseph and his father were embalmed after 
death (Gen. 50: 2, 3, 26) — a service performed by the 
physicians. The antiquities of Egypt furnish most 
conclusive testimony to their skill in this art — a skill 
far surpassing that of any other people known to his- 
tory. Great numbers of those embalmed bodies (" mum- 
mies ") have been found in Egyptian tombs within the 
present century, in perfect preservation. On this 
point the coincidences between sacred and profane his- 
tory are striking. The practice was very ancient, 

some mummies bearing the date of the oldest kings. It 
was performed by a special class of physicians. In 
harmony with Moses, Herodotus and Diodorus state 
that the embalming process occupied forty days; the 
entire period of mourning seventy. Classic authorities 
give accounts similar to those in Gen. 50 of great 



ANCIENT EGYPT CONFIRMS MOSES. 165 

mourning for the dead. The monuments contain rep- 
resentations to the same effect. Funeral trains, pro- 
cessions, of such sort as Gen. 50 records, are represented 
abundantly in the oldest tombs at Elithias, also at 
Sagguarah, at Gizeh, and at Thebes. (Hengstenberg's 

Egypt and Moses, pp. 70-78). A coincidence so 

minute as this is noticed; that mourners forbore to 
shave their hair or beard ; but none might appear be- 
for the king unshorn. Consequently we observe that 
in the mourning scene of Gen. 50, Joseph does not come 
before the king in person but " spake unto the house of 
Pharaoh " requesting them to speak in his behalf to the 
king (Gen. 50: 4-6). 

Quite in contrast with the usual oriental custom, 
women were exempt from seclusion and moved in society 
with apparently entire freedom. This appears in the 
family of Potiphar. The ancient sculptures and paint- 
ings found in their tombs give a very full view of the 
domestic life of the ancient Egyptians, no point of which 
is more striking than the high social position of woman 
and the entire absence of the harem system of seclusion. 
" The wife is called the lady of the house." (See Smith's 
Bible Dictionary, p. 677). According to the monuments 
the women in Egypt lived under far less restraint than 
in the East, or even in Greece. Wilkinson's Egypt is 
full of testimony to this point (Vol. II, p. 389). Heng- 
stenberg's Moses, p. 24. 

Sad to say there is abundant evidence from profane 
sources of a very lax morality among married women — 
of which the history of Joseph in Potiphar's house is an 
illustration. Herodotus gives a fact in point: " The 
wife of one of the earliest kings was untrue to him. It 
was a long time before a woman could be found who 
was faithful to her husband. When at last one was 
found, the king took her without hesitation for his 
wife." 

Yet other points might be adduced of coincidence 
between the sacred and the profane records of Egypt as 
the former appear in Moses. The above may be taken 
as specimens. Most amply do they testify that the 
author of Genesis was entirely familiar with Egyptian 
life and manners. The sharpest and most unfriendly 
criticism has hitherto detected no point of discrepancy 
between these respective records — no point in which it 



166 SPECIAL PASSAGES. 

can be made to appear that Moses wrote without well 
understanding the Egyptian life of which he speaks. 

The corresponding coincidences in Exodus will be 

suggested in their place. 

Some special passages occurring in these latter chap- 
ters of Genesis should receive attention. 

Jacob going down into Sheol to his son Joseph. 

In Gen. 37 : 35 Jacob, supposing Joseph to be dead, 
says — u I will go down into the grave (Sheol) to my son 
mourning." The reader of the Hebrew text of Genesis 
has not met with this word before, and may reasonably 
expect to see its meaning discussed here. 

In the outset it should be observed that these words 
can not possibly mean — My dead body shall go down 
into the grave proper, the sepulcher — there to lie by 
the side of Joseph's dead body. He could not have 
meant this because the place of Joseph's supposed dead 
body was entirely unknown to him. He had seen his 
bloody coat and inferred that Joseph was no doubt torn 
in pieces; where, he knew not; and whether devoured 
by flesh-eating animals he could not know. We must 

therefore reject this construction of his words. 

Plainly the Joseph he thought of was the undying soul. 
He expected at his own death to meet Joseph in that 
state or place which the Hebrews indicated by the word 
" Sheol." ^ 

What is the primary significance of this word ? 
What were the views of the ancient Hebrews in regard 
to its location and the state of its occupants ? 

The noun " Sheol " is made from the verb Shaal * 
having the sense, to ask, to demand ; and conceives of 
the place as evermore demanding, insatiable; that 
which is never full ; never has enough. The current 
Hebrew conceptions of the word may be seen in Prov. 
30: 15, 16, and Isa. 5 : 14, and Hab. 2: 5. "There are 
three things that are never satisfied ; yea four say not, 

It is enough : the grave " [Sheol], etc. " Therefore 

hell [Sheol] hath enlarged herself and opened her mouth 
without measure ; and their glory, and their multitude 
and their pomp, and he that rejoiceth shall descend 



GOING DOWN TO SHEOL. 167 

into it." " Who enlargeth his desire as hell " [Sheol] 
and is as Death, and can not be satisfied," etc. 

As to the location of Sheol it seems clear that they 
thought of it as an under-vjorld, as somehow beneath 
the surface of the earth. We see this in the case of 
Korah and his company (Num. 16: 28-34), of w r hom 
Moses said : — " If the earth open her mouth and swal- 
low them up with all that appertain to them, and they 
go doion alive into Sheol [Eng. " the pit "], then shall 
ye understand that these men have provoked the 
Lord " . . . . " As he had made an end of speaking these 
w r ords, the ground clave asunder that w r as under them 
and the earth opened her mouth and swallowed them 

up," etc. We find the same view r in Deut. 32 : 22. 

"For a fire is kindled in mine ariger and shall burn unto 
the low r est hell [Sheol], and shall consume the earth 
with her increase and set on fire the foundations of the 
mountains." 

In regard to their conceptions of Sheol as a state of 
being for the righteous and the w T icked dead, it is easy 
to see that holy men of the oldest time lacked the clear 
light of the gospel age. Then it had not yet been 
said — " In my father's house are many mansions " ; " I 
go to prepare a place for you, and I w T ill come again and 
receive you to myself that where I am, there ye may be 
also (Jno. 14 : 2, 3). They had not heard these words 
of Jesus — " This day shalt thou be w T ith me in paradise " 
(Luke 23 : 43) ; nor those of Paul : " Having a desire to 
depart and to be w r ith Christ w T hich is far better " (Phil. 

1 : 23). But the patriarchs did expect to "be gathered 

to their people " — the good men who had gone on before. 
This is said of Abraham (Gen. 25 : 8) ; of Ishmael (25 : 
17) ; of Isaac (35 : 29); and of Jacob (49 : 29, 33). David 
said of his deceased infant child : " I shall go to him, 
but he shall not return to me." Job said of that little 
known w T orld — " There the wricked cease from troubling, 
and there the weary are at rest " (Job 3 : 17), and yet he 
sometimes thought of it as intensely dark, for gospel 
light had not then fallen upon it : — " Before I go whence 
I shall not return, even to a land of darkness and 
the shadow of death ; a land of darkness as darkness 
itself ; and of the shadow of death without any order, 
and where the light is as darkness " (Job 10 : 21, 22). 
Conceptions of this state as well illustrating the fall 



168 SPECIAL PASSAGES. 

and doom of wicked kings and kingdoms, tinged, it 
would seem, with the spirit of poetrv, may be seen in 
Isaiah 14, and Ezek. 31 : 15-18. 

How far these notions as to the locality of Sheol are 
to be ascribed to direct inspiration, and how far to a 
merely human speculation, following the leading 
thought that the body goes doivn and back to dust at 
death, it seems by no means easy to determine posi- 
tively. We may be allowed to doubt whether the Lord 
intended to reveal definitely the location of human souls 
after death. It was a point of the least conceivable im- 
portance ; and moreover our knowledge of celestial ge- 
ography may be yet quite too limited to admit of any 
intelligible revelation on this point. 

Jacob's benedictions upon his sons on his death-bed — more 
or less prophetic — present some points that call for spec- 
ial notice. Remarkably they seem in most if not in all 
cases to start from the then existing present, and to 
build their allusions to the future upon it. We see it 
in the case of Reuben— -noted for his outrage of his fath- 
er's nuptial bed; of Simeon and Levi, whose history 
suggested their cruelty toward the men of Shechem ; of 
Judah, whose name bore the thought of praise and whose 
record in the case of Joseph put him at once in the front 
among his brethren ; of Joseph, whose relations to his 
father and indeed to all the family had been surpass- 
ingly precious. * The special address of Jacob to each of 
these was closely linked to their past history. ,The 
prophetic feature in all these cases seems to have been 
suggested by these salient points of their history. Reu- 
ben as the first-born might have kept his supremacy — 
if he had been worthy of it — but he was not. Simeon 
never rose to any distinction, and scarcely held any 
well-defined territory in Canaan. Levi came into prom- 
inence as the ancestor of Aaron and of Moses, and re- 
deemed himself also by the religious zeal and energy 
of Phineas in a great emergency during the wilderness 
life (Num. 26 : 6-13). The tribe were scattered in Is- 
rael, yet not in the bad sense. Judah and Joseph had 
each a future more resplendent and distinguished than 
any other of the twelve — their prominence in Jacob's 
benediction being fully carried out through the history 
of their nation. 



THE SCEPTER OF JUDAH ) SHILOH. 169 

Some special passages and phrases should be briefly- 
explained. 

In v. 4, the phrase, "Unstable as water," does not 
compare water to the solid earth or to more solid rock 
as treacherous to th§ foot and unsafe to stand on ; but 
rather as bubbling, effervescing under heat or applied 
force — as therefore a fit image of ungoverned passion; 
of wantonness, impatient of restraint. Reuben had no 
moral stamina, and therefore could not hold his natural 
place of headship as the first-born — a moral lesson 
worthy of thoughtful consideration. A young man 
given to licentious indulgence can have no solid bot- 
tom to his character. The sagacious will never trust 
him. * 

v. 5. " Simeon and Levi are brethren" — of kindred 
spirit; "instruments of cruelty are in their habita- 
tion " ; better, instruments of cruelty their swords are. 
Most solemnly does the dying patriarch disavow all 

sympathy with their cruelty ! The phrase — " Mine 

honor " in the sense of myself — my nobler powers — is 
specially significant here, for their spirit was dishonor- 
able, treacherous, basely cruel. Jacob had a sense of 
honor which utterly forbade all sympathy with them 

in this thing. In the last clause of v. 6, the English 

margin gives the sense of the Hebrew : " They 
houghed oxen." They slew not one man only but 
man as a species ; and cut the hamstrings of their 
cattle. 

The benediction upon Judah (v. 10) stands unrivaled in 
importance and is not without difficulty. The main 
question is whether the word "Shiloh" signifies the 
Messiah, in the special sense of the Peace-giving One ; 
or refers to the city of that name in Canaan. If it re- 
fers to the Messiah, the sense, the application and the 
fulfillment of the passage are facile and truly rich — 
thus : Judah shall head the tribes and give them kings 
until the Great Messiah shall come : then all the na- 
tions (Gentile and Jew) shall obey him — obedience 
rather than "gathering" being the best established 
sense of the word. It occurs elsewhere only in Prov. 
30:17. 

No facts of Jewish history are better known than 
these — that Judah led the march through the wilder- 



170 THE SCEPTER OF JUDAH; SHILOH. 

ness, and that from David to Christ the scepter was in 
Judah — until the Messiah came, when it dropped from 
his hand. "We have a law," (said the Jewish 
Sanhedrim in the age of Christ) "and by our law he 
ought to die" — i. e. for blasphemy. But under their 
law, capital punishment was bv stoning (Lev. 24: 15, 
16, and Mat. 26 : 65, 66, and Jno. 19 : 7). Having lost the 
power of life and death over criminals, they were com- 
pelled to take the case to the Roman authorities. 
Their mode of capital punishment was crucifixion. 
Thus the " cross " stands through all the ages to prove 
that the scepter had departed from Judah and that the 

Messiah had come. But he came not only to die but 

to reign, and the nations of the wide earth are to bow 

to his scepter. Such is the construction of this 

passage, provided the term "Shiloh" refers to the 
Messiah. 

That it does refer to him may be argued on two 
grounds : 

(a.) This construction is facile, natural, and sup- 
ported by analogous prophecies ; 

(b.) The other which makes Shiloh the name of a 
town in Canaan, labors under serious, not to say insur- 
mountable difficulties. 

(a.) "Shiloh" is derived readily from the verb 
Shalah,* kindred with Shalam, both w r ords being in 
frequent use in the sense of being at peace and in rest; 
expressing good wishes for peace — i. e. for all pros- 
perity — the noun from which might naturally mean 
the author of peace, as we see in Mic. 5 : 4. Further- 
more, this distinctive feature of the Messiah's char- 
acter and mission is the theme of Ps. 72 and of many 
passages in Isaiah, e. g. 9 : 6, 7, and 11 : 1-10, and 60 : 18- 
22. These prophecies naturally follow the lead of this 
and therefore sustain the construction here given it. 

Moreover, it is natural and highly probable that 
Jacob whose twelve sons were to found the twelve 
tribes of Israel and who knew that the Messiah was to 
come in the line of some one of his sons, should indicate 
which. Noah had designated Shem : God had desig- 
nated Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ; now the choice is nat- 
urally made out of these twelve. That the long prom- 
ised Seed was in Jacob's thought is forcibly and beauti- 






THE LESS READABLE CHAPTERS OF GENESIS. 171 

fully suggested in the midst of these dying benedic- 
tions by the words — " I have waited for thy salvation. 
Lord"' (49 : IS). In the sustaining hope of a coming 
Savior he had waited and trusted through many long 
years ; for these words express the precious experiences 
of a life. As Jesus himself testified of Abraham, "He 
rejoiced to see my day." hailing it joyously from afar, 
so Jacob witnesses of himself. " I have waited for thy 
salvation, Lord." 

(b.) Those who give " Shiloh " here the geographical 
sense argue that in every other case of its use in 
scripture, it refers to the town of that name. This 
name for a town appears first in Josh. IS : 1, 8, 10, and 
often subsequently in Judges, 1 Sam., etc. But there is 
no evidence that in Jacob's day it had come into use in 
geography. This usage, so far as appears, was long 
subsequent. Nothing forbids, therefore, that Jacob 
should use it simply for its significance — the Peace-giv- 
ing One. 

Again, the most marked supremacy of Judah began 
after the nation had reached Shiloh. It is therefore 
bad history and very inept prophecy to represent Judah 
as holding the scepter until the nation came to Shiloh; 
the fact being that he had not held it in the full sense 
previously to reaching Shiloh, but did hold it for many 
centuries after Shiloh had lost its pre-eminence as the 
religious capital. I see therefore no good ground for 
setting aside the Messianic interpretation of this pass- 
age. The argument in its defense is ably and fully 
drawn out by Keil in his Commentary, and yet more 
folly by Hen^stenbers: in his Christoloev, vol. 1. pp. 
50-63. 

The less readable portions of Genesis. 

We have passed several portions of Genesis with little 
or no notice: e, g. the genealogical tables, and some of 
the less important sketches of family and tribal his- 
tory; e. g. that of Abraham's sons by Keturah ; of Ish- 
niael. Esau, Laban. etc. 

Of these less readable passages, let it be noted : 
1. They are such as never could find place in a tale 
of fiction, gotten up in some later age to interest and 
amuse the reader. The fact that nobodv finds interest 



172 THE LESS READABLE CHAPTERS OF GENESIS. 

and amusement in reading them now proves conclu- 
sively that no writer of fiction could possibly have con- 
cocted such chapters from his own fancy and have 
foisted them into a professedly ancient history. The 
men who forge books of fiction to pass them off as 
truthful history are careful not to put in unreadable 
chapters — void of rational or even imaginative interest 
to the men of after ages. 

2. Consequently these passages are incontrovertible 
proof of the genuineness and real antiquity of these 
writings. In their time they had interest — just that 
interest which attaches to sober truth : none more or 
other than this. 

3. The Scriptures were written with special adapta- 
tion to their first readers, and must include therefore 
those matters which had real value and interest to 
them, whether they would continue to have interest and 
value many thousand years onward or not. This 
fact, often overlooked, has many important bearings. 

4. By far the greater portion of these historic books 
has a permanent interest and value to us and will have to 
their readers through all future ages. We see in these 
ancient books not only the earliest developments of 
human nature in the primitive society of the race, but 
also the earliest manifestations of God to men, and can 
trace their progressive unfoldings step by step age 
after age by new methods and with clearer light as we 
move on toward the great era when God became mani- 
fest in human flesh. 

5. It may well reconcile us to the annoyance (if 
such it be) of some unreadable portions that precisely 
these above all others afford us the strongest evidence 
of the genuineness and high antiquity of these entire 
books. They constitute an internal mark of antiquity 
and genuineness which by the laws of human nature 
never could be counterfeited. The man who should 
attempt to counterfeit such proofs that his fiction is 
true history would not prove himself very sharp save 
in the skill of spoiling his book and frustrating the 
only conceivable object of a fiction — for the sake of what ? 

We lay down Genesis, profoundly impressed that 
this oldest volume of human history is unsurpassed 
in simplicity and beauty, and wonderfully rich in 
its revelations both of man and of his Maker. 



CHAPTER XII, 



EXODUS. 

This second book of the Pentateuch takes its modern 
name from its principal event, the exodus of the He- 
brew people — their marching forth out of their house 
of bondage from the land of their oppression, to be re- 
planted under God's gracious providence in the goodly- 
land promised to their fathers. This one main event 

as recorded in this book includes many subordinate 
points, e. g. 

I. The oppressions of the Hebrews by the Egyptians. 

II. Moses, who became in the hand of God their great 
Deliverer; his history; his early training and his call 
from the Lord to this great work. 

III. The great mission of Moses to EgypVs king ; his re- 
ception; the ten successive plagues — miraculous judg- 
ments from the hand of God ; the case of the magicians; 
the hardening of Pharaoh's heart, and the ultimate result. 

I. The Oppression. 

The narrative shows that this oppression consisted in 
part in the exacting of terribly severe labors, especially 
in building, including the making of brick, the prepa- 
ration of mortar, the transportation of these materials, 
and the erection of buildings. The ancient monuments of 
Egypt confirm the statements of sacred history, showing 
that the Egyptians employed national bondmen in the 
construction of their vast national works; that they 
placed over them task-masters; that when the work- 
men fell short of the required tale of brick, their mas- 
ters put them to more severe labors, and in some cases 
to labors of other sort. It has been supposed by some 
that the ancient paintings represented some of these 
laborers with the well-known physiognomy of the He- 
brews. 

It should be noted that this bondage differed from the 
slavery of modern times in this one respect — that the 
bondmen were held by the king and the nation in their 
national capacity and not by individuals. The He- 
UTS) 



174 EXODUS. 

brews were not held as private but as public property. 
The king and the nation as such bore therefore the re- 
sponsibility and guilt of this oppression, and God let 
his judgments smite them for the most part in such a 
way as to indicate their sin. 

A second feature in this oppression was the king's 
cruel edict to murder the male infants. This was first 
enjoined upon the Hebrew midwives. Fearing God 
more than Egypt's king, they evaded obedience ; where- 
upon the king commanded all his people to cast the 

male infants into the river. The reason assigned for 

both these measures was public policy, to prevent the 
rapid increase of Hebrew population which the king 
assumed might be dangerous to his throne and people 
in case of a foreign invasion. Such a policy is at once 
short-sighted and wicked ; short-sighted, since kind 
treatment would have made this rapidly growing peo- 
ple their fast friends and helpers; wicked, because it 
violates common morality, insulting God, and provoking 
his wrath by outraging all the obligations which he im- 
poses on men toward their fellows. Egypt's king and 
court presently found themselves arrayed against Al- 
mighty God and saw him take up the challenge in a 
fearful conflict for mastery. We shall see in the final 
issue that the Lord improved this occasion to illustrate 
some of the noblest principles of his government over 
nations and indeed over individuals as well, showing 
that he abhors oppression ; takes the side of the op- 
pressed; hurls his fiercest thunderbolts against giant 
oppressors in every age; and every-where holds men to 
the responsibility of using their power to befriend and 
not to oppress their human brethren. 

This oppression began with " a new king over Egypt 
who knew not Joseph." It is generally held that these 
words indicate a new dynasty — one royal line super- 
seded by another, perhaps a foreign power coming in to 
supplant the former dynasty. The points of historic 
contact between Egyptian and Hebrew chronology may 
at some future day be adjusted with reasonable certainty. 
They are not yet. The subject is undergoing a some- 
what thorough investigation with some prospect of ul- 
timate success. At present I am not prepared to 
express positive opinions. 



THE OPPRESSION. 175 

Two of the disputed periods in Hebrew chronology 
are necessarily involved : 

-riod of the Judges, which as shown above 
some reduce to 339 years : others extend to 450* 

(b.) The period of the sojourn in Egypt, made by 
some 215 years : by others. 430. Some ot the theories 
which attempt to locate this new king of Egypt in his 
relation to Hebrew history place the Exodus about B. C. 
) : others B. C. 1491. Some put the commencement 
of the sojourn in Egypt B. C. 2030; others B. C. 1706 : 
yet others B. C. 1815. I have give:: my reasons foi 
adopting the longer perk Is. It is possible that Egypt- 
ian authorities may yet throw a strong influence upon 
the decision of these much disputed points of Hebrew 
chronology, 

The narrative shows the: the Hebrews had become 
numerically strong and were rapidly growing stronger. 
Joseph had been dead probably a considerable time 
and all the men of his generation. Being 39 years old 
when his father cam- into Egypt and dying at the age 
of 110, he lived tc protect his people 71 years. Moses 
SO years old when he came ';e::re Pharaoh, bearing 
the command of the Almighty — "Let my people go." 
I: is probable that the terrible edict to destroy all the 
male infants did not long r the birth of Moses. 

The interval o: the leath of Joseph and the birth 

of Moses will depend on the duration of the entire Bo- 
rn in Egypt, since from this entire sojourn we must 
subtract the years of Joseph's life after the sojourn : :e- 
gan and the years of Moses before it closed, i. e. 71 — SO 
== 151. This sum must be subtracted either from 215, 
leaving 64 : or from 430. leaving 279. The latter I as- 
sume to be the true period. It provides abundantly for 
the great increase of the Hebrew people, and accounts 
for the fear felt by Egypt's " new king." 

II. Moses. 

We shall study the history of Moses without the key 
if we overlook the point made by the writer to the He- 
brews (11 : 23) : " By faith Moses when he was born was 
hid three months because they saw that he was a proper 
child, and they were not afraid of the king's command- 
ment.'' Faith in God made them fearless of Egypt's 
cruel king. It would seem also that they saw in the 



176 MOSES. 

peculiar beauty of this child a sort of prophecy of his 
future, something at least which raised expectation and 
put them upon special ventures to save his life. Three 
months they secreted him within their home. When 
this expedient could suffice no longer, they prepared an 
ark of bulrushes — a little box, water-tight, constructed 
to float — and moored it with its treasure among the 
flags on the river's bank. We may suppose that his 
mother knew the spot where the king's daughter was 
wont to take her baths, and that her faith and prayer 
lay back of this venture to throw her darling infant 
upon the compassion of a stranger woman's heart. It 
need not be supposed that she foresaw his future adop- 
tion into the royal family, his training for forty years 
in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and his consequent 
qualification to become the great Hebrew Law-giver 
and Deliverer. Suffice it that these results lay in the 
thought of God. She had faith enough to commit her 
darling to God's care and to leave all the future un- 
known results to his adjustment. 

The ways of God were mercifully kind toward this 
Hebrew mother. She stationed his elder sister as a 
sentinel to watch the issue, and then (let us presume) 
gave herself to prayer. When this elder sister w T ith 
palpitating heart saw the daughter of Pharaoh take 
the beautiful child to her bosom, she felt that her time 
had come. Modestly advancing, she said, "Shall I go 
and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women that she 
may nurse the child for thee"? Pharaoh's daughter 
said, Go. How joyfully did she go and call the child's 
own mother! God's finger was there. The mother's 
faith has come up as sweet incense before Him and her 
heart is made glad, as only a praying mother's can be. 
There was no occasion to tell us that she consecrated 
this child to Israel's God for any service he might have 
for him in his after life. Such a mother, drawn by her 
sweet faith into such relationship to God, could do 
nothing less. Moreover, this was no barren consecra- 
tion — was not a vow once made and soon forgotten. 
Nothing can be more certain than that she cared dili- 
gently for the moral training and culture of this mar- 
velously saved son. Else how could it happen that 
" when he was come to years, he refused to be called the 
son of Pharaoh's daughter; choosing rather to suffer 



MOSES. 177 

affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the 
pleasures of sin for a season; esteeming reproach for 
Christ greater riches than all the treasures of Egypt, 
for he had respect to the recompense of the reward" 
(Heb. 11 : 24-26) ? The seeds of this world-conquering 
faith must have been dropped early into his tender 
mind. This hired Hebrew nurse, permitted to come 
into the royal palace by some back-way, was indulged 
this privilege freely, w r e know not precisely how long ; 
but let us presume that the same faith and prayer kept 
this door open, at least for her occasional visits in his 
future years. How many testimonies of God's love to 
the fathers of their nation she dropped into his youth- 
ful ear ; how much she told him of God as " the exceed- 
ing great reward" of his believing people ; how well she 
put the contrast between " the treasures of Egypt " and 
the treasures laid up for God's then persecuted people : — 
these points are rather left to our inference than 
definitely stated; but w T e may be very sure that the 
faith of Moses took hold of these grand truths of then 
extant revelation ; fixed its hold early ; and held fast 
through all his future life. 

We have three co-ordinate narratives of the early 
years of Moses : that given in Heb. 11 : 24-27, very 
brief, and touching only its speciallv religious side; 
while that of Stephen (Acts 7: 20-29) is full, even 
somewhat more full than the narrative in Ex. 2 : 10-15. 
Particularly Stephen adds that Moses was "learned in 
all the wisdom of the Egyptians and mighty in words 
and in deeds" — a man like Joseph of immense ef- 
ficiency : — also that he was " full forty years old " when 
it came into his heart to visit his brethren the chil- 
dren of Israel — a statement which shows that he dis- 
tinctly recognized this relationship of brethren. See- 
ing a brother Hebrew abused by an Egyptian he inter- 
posed, smote the Egyptian dead, and buried him in the 
sand. Stephen's words suggest that this was not 
merely one of those quick, spontaneous impulses felt by 
noble souls in view of outrageous wrong, but was a first 
step toward a contemplated career of interposed force 
for the rescue of his people from their oppression. 
" For he supposed his brethren would have understood 
how that God by his hand w T ould deliver them; but 
they understood not " (Acts 7 : 25). The whole of the 



178 MOSES. 

fact; seems to be that the Lord was not yet ready and 
had not fully prepared Moses for this great life-work of 
his yet, and certainly had not inaugurated him into 

it.* Interposing the next day in a quarrel between 

two of his own Hebrew brethren, he learned that his 
slaying of the Egyptian was known, and immediately 
sought safety by flight to the land of Midian. The 
Lord had more objects than one in turning his steps 
thither ; not only his then present safety, but the spir- 
itual culture of so much solitude and of long-continued, 
unbroken communion with God and of long tried faith, 
coupled with the incidental advantage of becoming 
perfectly familiar with that great wilderness through 
which he was to lead the hosts of Israel for forty 
years. 

Scarcely had he penetrated this desert land in his 
flight when he made the acquaintance of a priest of 
Midian [Jethro], and of his seven shepherdess daugh- 
ters, one of whom became his wife. Like the some- 
what similar experience of Abraham, falling in with 
the priest of Salem, Melchisedek, the circumstance sug- 
gests the inquiry how much of the true knowledge and 
worship of God existed in those early ages outside the 
line of Abraham's family. The historical traces of such 
piety are certainly very few, yet they recur so inci- 
dentally that we are justified in the hope that these 
cases are not exhaustive; stood not altogether alone. 
When we come to consider the history of Job we shall 
take occasion to observe that his location is certainly 
in this great region of Arabia, and that his date must 
in all probability have somewhat preceded this resi- 
dence of Moses in the land of Midian. Here Moses 
may have found the story in a traditional form ; may 
perhaps have seen Job's immediate descendants; may 
possibly have put the story in its present form as one 
of the pastimes of a literary shepherd's life ; and then, 
retaining it in his possession during his subsequent 
years, may have himself solved the problem — How 
came this book in the archives of the Hebrew nation, 
on an equal footing as to inspired authority with their 
historical books ? 

*Many an American reader will be reminded of John Brown 
striking for the redemption of the American slave. 



THE MISSION OF MOSES. 179 



The Great Mission of Moses. 

Of the second forty-year period in the life of Moses, 
little is reported save its first scenes and its last. Ex. 
3 opens the latter. Moses is keeping the flock of his 
father-in-law, the priest of Midian. He has ''led them 
to the back side of the desert'' — i e. to the west side of 
it, for in designating the points of compass the He- 
brews always turned the face toward the east. The 
east is in front — before ; and of course the west is be- 
hind. Horeb and Sinai lay on the western margin of 

the great Arabian desert. Here "the angel of the 

Lord appeared to him" (v. 2), called "angel 7 - however 
only as one who comes or is sent with divine manifesta- 
tions ; for in everv subsequent mention he is called %i the 
Lord" and "God" (vs. 4, 6, 7, 11, 13, etc.)* Remark- 
ably this visible manifestation was made by the sym- 
bol of fire in a bush — the bush all aflame yet not con- 
sumed. This strange sight attracted the attention of 
Moses, and he turned aside to look into it more closely, 
when a voice from the bush called him by name ; 
warned him not to approach in the spirit of mere curi- 
osity, but to take off his shoes because the place on 
which he stood was holy ground. The mystery before 
Moses' mind is solved — the Lord is there! His pur- 
pose in this appearing is soon told. He has heard the 
cry of distress from his oppressed people, has come 
down to deliver them and to bring them forth into 
Canaan. He has a mission for Moses in this work. 
" Come," said he, " I will send thee to Pharaoh." 
Moses knew the power and the pride of Pharaoh, and 
saw at a glance the difficulties of this enterprise. No 
wonder he shrank back saying — " Who am I that I 
should do this''? God replied: "I will certainly be 
with thee " — a sufficient answer to any amount of con- 
scious weakness and faintness of heart. The Lord 
added — " This shall be a token to thee that I have sent 
thee ; when thou hast brought the people out of Egypt, 
ye shall serve [i. e. worship] God in this mountain." 
From that moment this token was God's pledge to 
Moses of success in bringing the people forth from 

* See on the Scripture usage of u the angel of the Lord/' p. 130. 



180 EXODUS. 

Egypt ; and when it was fulfilled in the scenes of na- 
tional worship and consecration on Horeb, it became 
doubly a sign to all the people that the Lord their God 
was in this great movement. 

Moses anticipates that the people will ask for the 
name of God, and he therefore inquires- -What shall I 
answer them? To which the Lord replies: U I am that I 
am"; and then abbreviating the phrase, adds, "Thus 
shalt thou say to Israel, I am hath sent me to you." 
What immediately follows should be carefully noted. 
God said moreover to Moses (still reiterating the same 
thought though in other and more familiar terms): 
" Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel : The 
Lord — i. e. Jehovah, God of your fathers, hath sent me 
unto you ; this is my name forever and this is my me- 
morial through all generations." This v. 15 is without 
doubt the key to the true sense of the names as previ- 
ously given — U I am that lam" and in briefer form, u l 
am." Their true meaning is in the name Jehovah. 
This name contemplates God as evermore existing, the 
same unchangeable God, and therefore ever faithful to 
his promises. This view of God assumes that he re- 
veals, himself personally as the God of his trustful 
people, entering into covenant with them and never 
failing to remember and fulfill that covenant. 

In order to see the full force and pertinence of the 
passage, it should be considered that by common He- 
brew usage, the names of persons were significant. 
They were words with a meaning. This is true of all 
the names by which the true God is made known. 
And when Moses suggests that the people will ask for 
God's name, it is not implied that they had never heard 
any name for God and did not know what to call him ; 
but this — They would know what new or special 
feature of his character was to be manifested then. 
Their question was equivalent to asking — What does 
God propose to do now ? What new movement does he 
contemplate ? What new development of God may we 

expect? To the question so understood, the Lord 

made a direct answer : — I have come to reveal my 
eternal faithfulness to my covenant with your fathers. 
I pledged myself to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that I 
would bring their posterity into the goodly land of 
Canaan : I have come down to fulfill that word and to 



THE MISSION OF MOSES. 181 

put into your national history an enduring testimony 
that my name is truly, ' ; I am that I am " — the immu- 
table and eternal God, whose word of promise faileth 
not forevermore. 

The same course of thought appears again Ex. 6: 1- 
8 — a passage which should be studied in connection 
with this. "God said to Moses, I am the Jehovah. I 
appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob by 
the name of God Almighty; but by my name Jehovah 
was I not known unto them w — the meaning of which 
is, not that the name Jehovah was never used by them, 
or given of God to them ; but that its special significance 
had not been manifested to them as he was then about 
to make it manifest. His power God had revealed — his 
power to protect them in their perils, his power to fulfill 
to Abraham the promise of a son ; but such a glorious 
testimony to his faithfulness in fulfilling promise as 
was then to be given, the patriarchs had never seen. 
The redemption of Israel from Egyptian bondage was 
destined to stand through all the ages of their history as 
the crowning manifestation of God's faithfulness — the 
standard and unsurpassed testimony to the significance 
of his most honored name Jehovah. By this shall ye 
know that I am Jehovah your God when I bring you 
out from under the burdens of the Egyptians and bring 
you into the land given by solemn oath to your fathers 
and to their posterity for a heritage (vs. 7, 8). 

In entering upon this redemption of his people the 
Lord understood well the difficulties to be overcome and 
fully comprehended the situation. If Moses saw them at 
a glance, so did the Lord also. It was not possible that 
Moses could have a deeper sense or a juster view than 
God had of Pharaoh's great pride, of his consciousness 
of power and stubbornness of purpose. The Lord ex- 
pected a conflict ; was ready for it ; and by no means 
disposed to shun it. " I am sure that the king of Egypt 
will not let you go; no, not by a mighty hand" — not 
even under fearful visitations of God's supernatural 
power. The precise sense of this seems to be that Pha- 
raoh would resist God's will for a long time despite the 
inflictions of his mighty hand and would yield only in 
the last extremity. In fact he never honestly yielded 
his will to God's will, but only bent for the moment 



182 MOSES. 

before the blast, to rally again with more desperate 
madness after it had swept by. When at length he 
saw that the people were really gone, his unsubdued will 
rose again in towering hardihood, to rush more madly 
than ever before against the uplifted arm of the Al- 
mighty and meet his doom in the bottom of the Red Sea! 
This chapter closes (vs. 21, 22) with directions to 
the children of Israel to ask the Egyptians for gold, 
silver, and raiment. The Lord promised to give them 
such favor with the people that they would readily 
grant them what they asked. Our English version puts 
it "borrow " — as if the Israelites at least tacitly promised 
to bring these borrowed things back, or if nothing more, 
left the Egyptians to expect this. But this English 
w r ord "borrow" misrepresents the Hebrew and conse- 
quently the sense of the passage. The Hebrew verb 
used here never has the sense of borrow, but means 
simply to ash Indeed borrowing was out of the ques- 
tion because the Israelites were not coming back again. 
It was never God's thought that they should come back. 
He had come down to deliver them from their bondage 
and to bring them into Canaan. There is no reason to 
suppose that the Egyptians expected them back again. 
They gave what Israel asked, therefore, not as a loan, 
but because the Lord brought them into such relations 
to Israel that they were glad to get them out of the 
country any way, and perhaps hoped to avert more 
fearful plagues by these gifts to God's people. The his- 
torian in this case says (Ex. 12 : 33) — " The Egyptians 
were urgent upon the people that they might send them 
out of the land in haste ; for they said — We be all dead 
men " ; which the Psalmist confirms (Ps. 105 : 38) — 
"Egypt was glad when they departed, for the fear of 
them fell upon them." Manifestly the Lord counted it 
simple justice that Egypt should pay her slaves for long 
years of unrequited toil, and not send them away empty. 
Therefore he took measures to make the old masters but 
too glad to do this tardy justice. 

A new instrumentality of most vital importance now 
came to view, designed to bring about the redemption 
of God's people from Egypt, viz. supernatural agencies — 
miracles in the legitimate sense of the word. Noticeably 
these miracles were two-fold in character and purpose ; 



RETURNS TO EGYPT. 183 

one class designed to identify God to the people and be 
a witness to his present hand, to confirm their faith in 
him as their Deliverer : the other designed by terrible 
inflictions of calamity, to force upon Pharaoh's hardened 
heart the conviction of Jehovah's power and compel 
him to let God's people go. These two objects were to 
be accomplished ; the Hebrew r people were to be assured 
that their own God had indeed come ; Pharaoh must be 
made to know who Jehovah is ; how fearful the judg- 
ments of his uplifted hand are ; and how vain it is for 
mortals, though on thrones of human power, to lift up 
themselves against the Almighty. 

In the list of miraculous signs sent to convince the 
Hebrew people, we have (Ex. 4 : 1-8) the rod of Moses 
turned to a serpent and then turned back again to a 
rod ; then his hand withdrawn from his bosom leprous, 
white as snow; then again withdrawn, perfectly re- 
stored. 

The narrative gives the reader a strong sense of the 
reluctance of Moses to enter upon this new mission. 
Over and over again, in varying forms, -he pleads his 
want of adaptation ; that he is slow of speech, not elo- 
quent; that he sees no improvement in this regard since 
the Lord first spake to him; and finally he begs the 
Lord to send by any body else he pleases, only (he im- 
plies) excuse me. Plainly he pushed this plea for 
excuse not merely to the verge of modest propriety but 
beyond it, for we read — "The anger of the Lord was 
kindled against Moses." Yet he did so far regard the 
plea of Moses as to give him Aaron his elder brother to 
gpeak in his behalf. " Thou shalt speak to him and 
put words into his mouth ; he shall be thy spokesman 
to the people," and to Pharaoh. 

The way is now prepared for Moses and his family to 
return from Midian to Egypt. He took his wife and 
his two sons and proceeded on his journey. The scenes 
of the first night at the inn are recorded in these words : 
" And it came to pass by the way in the inn, that the 
Lord met him, and sought to kill him. Then Zipporah 
took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, 
and cast it at his feet, and said, Surely a bloody husband 
art thou to me. So he let him go: then she said, A 
bloody husband thou art, because of the circumcision." 
This account is very brief, leaving various points un- 
9 



184 MOSES. 

explained. Probably the facts were substantially these. 
Of their two sons, one had been circumcised ; the other 
had not — the prescribed rite having been disobeyed or 
at least neglected out of the deference of Moses to the 
opposition or reluctance of his wife. But as Moses is 
now about to assume the highest responsibilities between 
God and the Hebrew people, it is vital that his example 
in this respect should be spotless. The Lord therefore 
called him suddenly to account in this manner, threat- 
ening his very life. The cause is instantly understood; 
the wife of Moses yields and herself performs the rite, 
though perhaps not in the most submissive and amiable 
spirit. After this transaction and the developments 
attending it, we must suppose that Moses (prudently) 
sent back his wife and the two children to remain with 
her father until the redeemed Israelites should reach the 
home of Jethro. We hear no more of her and her 
children till the narrative in Ex. 18 brings them to 
view thus : " When Jethro had heard all that the Lord 
had done for Moses and Israel, he took Zipporah, Moses' 
wife, after he -had sent her bach, and her two sons and 

brought them to Moses" etc. Shortly after this scene 

at the inn, Aaron, sent of God for this purpose, meets 
Moses yet in the wilderness and is introduced to his 
responsibilities in the issues then pending before Pha- 
raoh and the people. Their first introduction to Pharaoh 
and the reception he gave to their message (Ex. 5) re- 
vealed his character and gave pre-intimations of the 
conflict. They put their case before him : — " Thus saith 
the Lord God of Israel, Let my people go that they may 
hold a feast unto me in the wilderness." " And Pha- 
raoh said— Who is the Lord that I should obey his voice 
to let Israel go ? I know not the Lord, neither will I 
let Israel go." Am not I king over all Egypt? Do 
you tell me there is some higher king than I and bid 
me obey his command ? I know nothing of your Je- 
hovah : I will never submit to his authority ! And as 
if to show how fearlessly he could resist their summons 
he at once puts heavier tasks upon the people, in proud 
defiance, daring the vengeance of their Great Defender! 
Verily the issues hasten to their crisis ! 

The suffering people are entirely disheartened and 
evince a painful lack of faith in the God of their fathers. 
When Moses rehearsed to them the inspiring words re- 



THE PLAGUES ON PHARAOH AND EGYPT. 185 

corded Ex. 6: 1-8, "They hearkened not unto Moses for 
anguish of spirit and for cruel bondage." Ah, how frail 
is poor human nature ! How weak is the faith of this 
long-oppressed people! But God's compassions are a 
great deep and he does not frown severely upon them, 
broken down though they were in their manhood and 
in their religious trust. Moses too seems to falter be- 
fore this stern reception from Pharaoh and this dis- 
heartening attitude of Israel (6: 12); but the loving 
kindness of the Lord endures, despite of these sad imper- 
fections in his servants. For the glory of his own name 
and not for the worthiness or virtue of his people, he 
has entered upon this redeeming work and he will carry 
it through. 

The narrative pauses a moment more (Ex. 6 : 16-27) 
to give us the genealogy of Levi, for the obvious pur- 
pose of showing the place of Moses and of Aaron in this 
record; and then proceeds (Ex. 7 and onward) with the 
impressive scenes of the ten plagues on Pharaoh and on 
Egypt 

A brief preliminary explanation of some of these 
plagues will be in place, after which the following 
points will have special attention : 

1. That these ten plagues on Egypt were really super- 
natural, miraculous. 

2. That several of them were very specially adapted 
to Egypt. 

3. The case of the magicians. 

4. The divine purpose and policy in shaping the de- 
mand made upon Pharaoh to let the people go. 

5. The hardening of Pharaoh's heart. 

6. The final result as shown in the last of the ten 
plagues. 

The ten plagues in their historical order stand thus : 

1. Water turned to blood (Ex. 7 : 14-25) ; 

2. Frogs (8 : 1-15) ; 

3. Lice (8 : 16-19) ; 

4. Flies (8 : 20-32) ; 

5. Murrain upon cattle (9 : 1-7) ; 

6. Boils (9 : 8-12) ; 

7. Hail (9 : 18-35) ; 

8. Locusts (10: 4-20); 



186 THE MISSION OF MOSES. 

9. Darkness (10: 21-27); 

10. Death of all first-born (11: 4-8, and 12: 12, 
29-33). 

References to these plagues by name may be seen in 
Ps. 78 : 43-51 ? and 105 : 27-38. 

By way of preliminary explanation it should be 
said — that the turning of water into blood should not be 
toned down to a mere discoloration of the waters of 
Egypt — a reddening of such sort as customarily at- 
tends the annual rise of the Nile, only carried in the 
present case somewhat beyond the ordinary degree. 
For, be it noticed, the record is that the waters were 
turned to blood ; that fish could no longer live in it but 
died (were the fish deceived by the mere appearance, 
the color ?) ; that the river became offensive to the 
smell; its waters could not be drank; "there was blood 
throughout all the land of Egypt." If this language 
does not mean far more than a mere discoloration— some- 
thing totally different from a visual deception ; in short, 
if it does not mean " turned to blood" then no language 
can be found to express it. 

In the third plague, the Hebrew word for "lice"* 
were better rendered gnats, yet an insect unknown to 
our country. Herodotus (B. C. 400) speaks of the great 
trouble which they cause and of the precautions used 
against them, Hartmann testifies : "All travelers 
speak of these gnats as an ordinary plague of the coun- 
try." f " So small as to be scarcely visible to the eye, 
their sting notwithstanding causes a most painful irri- 
tation. They even creep into the eyes and nose, and 
after harvest rise in great swarms from the inundated 
rice fields." (Keil.) 

In the fourth plague, the word translated " swarms 
of flies "J does not mean a mixed mass or swarm of va- 
rious insects as our translators assumed, but " a sting- 
ing, scorpion-like insect" [Fuerst], "so called from its 
sucking the blood " [Gesenius]. Sonnini (in Hengsten- 
berg's Moses, p. 117) says — "Men and animals are 
grievously tormented by them. It is impossible to 
form an adequate conception of their fury when they 

tHengstenberg's Egypt and Moses, pp. 115 and 116 
taw 



THE PLAGUES ON EGYPT. 187 

wish to fix themselves upon any part of the body. If 
they are driven away they light again the same in- 
stant, and their pertinacity wearies the most patient. 
They especially love to light in the corners of the eyes 
or on the edge of the eyelids, sensitive parts to which 
they are attracted by a slight moisture." "They are 
much more numerous and annoying than the gnats ; 
and when enraged, they fasten themselves upon the 
human body, especially upon the edge of the eyelids 

and become a dreadful plague" [Keil]. Obviously 

the American house-fly gives us no adequate idea of 
this fourth plague on Egypt. 

Of the sixth plague, " boils with blains," it need only 
be said that they were inflamed ulcers breaking forth 
into pustules, intensely painful. The word for " boils " 
is the same which describes . the plague brought by 
Satan upon Job. 

The seventh plague, hail with lightning, was not un- 
known in Egypt, yet was by no means common, and 
was specially rare in Upper Egypt — more frequent in 
Lower. The other plagues will be readily under- 
stood. 

1. It is now in place to show that these plagues were 
really supernatural — miraculous inflictions from the 
hand of the Almighty. 

(1.) Note, they were wrought in response to Pharaoh's 
challenge to Moses and Aaron to " show a miracle for 
themselves" (Ex. 7: 9). The Lord accepted this chal- 
lenge. Of course the achievements wrought can be 
nothing less than miracles. Given on the side of the 
Lord honesty and power; then nothing less than mira- 
cles can follow. 

His purpose in these terrible inflictions God an- 
nounces to Pharaoh in these words : " By this shalt 
thou know that I am the Lord" (Ex. 7 : 19 and 9: 14). 
Events in the common course of nature do not suffice 
for this purpose upon such a heart as Pharaoh's. The 
case demands real miracles — things done outside and 
apart from the ordinary laws of nature. 

(2.) The plagues came and went at the behest of 
Moses acting under God; in some cases, at a definite 
time previously indicated (9 : 5, 18, 29, 33 and 10 : 4) ; 
while some were removed at a time which Pharaoh him- 



188 THE MISSION OF MOSES. 

self for his more full satisfaction was allowed to fix (8 : 
9, 10). So I construe the somewhat disputed words (v. 
8); "Moses said to Pharaoh — Glory over me: When 
shall I entreat for thee," etc. Moses would say — I yield 
to you the honor of fixing the time : say when ; and I 
meet your time. Some critics translate simply — Ex- 
plain; declare yourself (Gesenius); or utter plainly, 
definitely (Fuerst); but the usual sense of the verb, 
coupled with the preposition (" over ") which follows, 
strongly favors the construction above given. 

(3.) Most of these plagues if not all discriminated 
sharply between the Hebrews in Goshen, and the 
Egyptians elsewhere in Egypt — e. g. flies (8 : 22, 23) 
and murrain (9 : 4-7), etc. This discrimination assumes 
that the plagues followed no general law of nature, but 
were altogether special, i. e. were truly miraculous. 

(4.) They surpassed and even totally eclipsed the 
achievements of the magicians; in fact, routed them 
utterly from the field and showed before all Egypt that 
the Almighty God was there ! The case of the magi- 
cians will be considered more fully below. 

(5.) The conviction was forced upon Pharaoh and the 
confession extorted from his lips (utterly against his 
will), 'that God's hand wrought these achievements ; 
that these calamities came at his command, and could 
be removed by his power and not otherwise. Hence 
over and over he begs Moses to pray to his God for their 
removal. See this in the case of the frogs (8 : 8) ; of 
the flies (8 : 28, 29) j of the hail (9 : 27-29) ; and the 
locusts (10: 16-18). It is not easy to see how stronger 
testimony to the reality of miracles can ever exist. 

(6.) That these plagues were real miracles, direct from 
the hand of God, it is unquestionably the intent of the 
whole narrative to set forth and affirm. So much, no 
candid reader of the account has ever questioned. Some 
may say, the narrator was himself deceived : none will 
deny that he saw God's finger there and meant to make 
all his readers see it. None can deny that according to 
his account even proud Pharaoh saw and felt the very 
finger of God in them. In fact the narrative makes this 
its main purpose, viz. to show that these judgments were 
nothing less than immediate visitations from the hand 
of the Almighty, Take out this element and there is 
nothing left. 



THE PLAGUES ADAPTED TO EGYPT. 189 

(7.) Or thus : If there is any truth in history, the 
children of Israel were for a long period bondmen in 
Egypt. Ultimately the day of their deliverance broke 
and they came forth free. How came this to pass? Was 
it by forcible insurrection — the uprising of slaves cut- 
ting their way out of bondage into freedom with brave 
hearts and strong arms of their own ? Or was it achieved 
by diplomacy? Or did Pharaoh relax his grasp and let 
the people go, under the impulses of humanity, or as a 
measure of political economy? All suppositions of this 
sort are not only unhistorical but utterly chimerical. 
No solution of this great problem — the redemption of 
Israel from bondage in Egypt — can ever find rational 
support save the one given in this record, viz. that the 
Almighty wrenched them from the grasp of Egypt's 
proud and hardened king by a series of terrible judg- 
ments launched upon him and his people in quick and 
hot succession, until they were only too glad to hasten 
and drive the people out lest they should all be dead 
men. They were made to feel that the battle was 
against Almighty God and that they could not succumb 
too soon. 

The events of this wonderful conflict and victory were 
stamped into the national life of Israel ; they reappear 
all along the course of future ages, interwoven into the 
very warp and woof of her national history and into the 
moral forces which developed the nation's piety. It 
might as reasonably be maintained that there never 
was any Hebrew nation as that God did not bring them 
forth out of Egypt with a high hand, first loosing Pha- 
raoh's grasp by these ten plagues, and last, burying his 
pursuing hosts and himself in the waters of the Red 
Sea. 

The supernatural character of these plagues will stand 
out yet more distinctly when we shall place them in 
contrast with the things done or attempted by the magi- 
cians. 

2. Several of these plagues were very specially adapted to 
Egypt 

This does not mean that they w r ere at all less miracu- 
lous than any other supposable inflictions would have 
been ; but only that they had more or less special fitness 
to the ends God had in view and were made to touch 



190 THE MISSION OF MOSES. 

the sensibilities of Egypt and her king in tender points. 
Thus, the Nile was Egypt's pride and glory, indeed her 
very life, and not improbably (as some maintain) was 
worshiped by the Egyptians as one of their gods. How 
terrible then to wake in the morning to find it one 
vast sea of blood ! — to have only blood for themselves 
and their cattle to drink; blood every-where for the 
eye to rest upon in place of the glory of the Nile ! How 
terribly suggestive of their national sin — of the male 
infants of the Hebrews murdered there, and of the re- 
sources of Israel's God to punish the guilty ! 

So we must suppose that frogs were often inconven- 
iently plenty in Egyptian waters. This visitation of 
such masses of them brought an evil by no means for- 
eign to their experience. The miracle lay in their 
numbers and was none the less a miracle because there 
had been frogs there before. It must have been excess- 
ively annoying and humiliating, — if the frog as a near 
neighbor is as unamiable in that country as in this. 

Essentially the same must be said of the lice [gnats] ; 
of the flies ; and of boils. All these were forms of evil 
not unknown in Egyptian life ; but yet in the present 
case w^re truly miraculous and fearfully afflictive. 

Their cattle were so useful and so highly esteemed 
that some of them were made objects of idolatrous wor- 
ship. The golden calf of Hebrew history was an Egypt- 
ian idea. There was special pertinence therefore in this 
fearful slaughter among Egypt's gods ! 

The hail, with most terrific lightning, was by far the 
more appalling because rain rarely falls there ; hail and 
lightning yet more rarely. 

In the natural course of events, locusts are among the 
fearful visitations of Oriental countries — not unknown 
in Egypt. In this case the fearfulness of the plague lay 
in their numbers, and the miracle was none the less be- 
cause they had had some experience before of this form 
of desolation. 

3. The case of the magicians. 

The entire account of them is in these words. After 
Aaron had cast down his rod before Pharaoh and it be- 
came a serpent, " Then Pharaoh called the wise men 
and the sorcerers, and they also, the magicians of Egypt, 
did so with their enchantments. For they cast down 






THE CASE OF THE MAGICIANS. 191 

every man his rod and they became serpents; but 
Aaron's rod swallowed up their rods " (Ex. 7 : 11, 12). 
Again, after the miracle of turning the water to blood, 
" The magicians of Egypt did so with their enchant- 
ments" (7: 22). After the miracle of the frogs, "the 
magicians did so with their enchantments and brought 
up frogs upon the land of Egypt " (8 : 7). Next, when 
all the dust became lice, " the magicians did so with 
their enchantments to bring forth lice, but they could not: 
so there were lice upon man and upon beast. Then the 
magicians said to Pharaoh — This is the finger of God " 
(8: 18, 19). Finally, under the plague of boils, "The 
magicians could not stand before Moses because of the 
boils, for the boil was upon the magicians and upon 
all the Egyptians" (9: 11). We hear of them in this 
history no more. 

The Hebrew word for "sorcerers " involves the practice 
of magic arts and incantations. The word for " magi- 
cians of Egypt " contemplates them originally as writers, 
the learned class, but couples with that the idea of 
special skill in horoscopy — the interpretation of dreams 
and the doing, or at least pretending to do, things beyond 
the skill of the uninitiated. The word for " enchant- 
ments " originally suggests secret arts, things covered, 

veiled from the public gaze. The passage Deut. 18 : 

10-14, gives most if not all the nearly synonymous 
words by which this class of men and their arts were 
designated, showing also that they were regarded before 
the Lord with most intense abhorrence as an abomina- 
tion. By the Mosaic law the practice of these arts was 
punishable with death (Ex. 22: 12). 

In regard to the case of the magicians as presented 
in this history, the point of chief interest will be this — 
Did they really perform miracles ? Did they in fact 
turn rods into serpents, and water into blood, and pro- 
duce some frogs in addition to what were there before ? 
1 am not sure that we have data sufficient to de- 
termine with certainty whether these things ascribed 
to them were simply tricks of hand, arts of jugglery ; 
or whether there was really some power exerted, more 

and other than human. The cases were of a sort in 

which deception was at least supposable. All the 
waters it would seem were turned to blood before their 
effort was made. If so, they had to do with what was 



192 THE MISSION OF MOSES. 

already blood and had only to make it appear to be 

water before they began operations. So of the frogs. 

When frogs were every- where in such numbers, it would 
not be specially difficult to make it appear that they 
produced yet more. The turning of rods into serpents 
is not unknown in the tricks of jugglery the world 
over. 

Of two facts we may be very sure. (1) They had no 
help from God. Their wonders were not wrought by 
God's power. We may put this denial on two inde- 
pendent grounds : (a.) The moral purpose of their 

work utterly forbids the least participation on God's 

part. God never fights against himself. (b.) Their 

power was infinitely less than divine. Compared with 
God's, it was shown to be simple weakness. " Aaron's 
rod swallowed up their rods." Before the plague of lice 
they were compelled to succumb, and (utterly against 
their will and against their interest) they declare to 
Pharaoh — "This is the finger of God"! It utterly dis- 
tances all our skill. We can not approach it. Before 
the boils, they writhed in agony. They could not even 
screen themselves from the terrible infliction. More- 
over it is made plain throughout the whole transaction 
that they were powerless to remove even the slightest 
of these plagues. If they had possessed this power Pha- 
raoh would have put them to this service. It is plain 
they shrank from even the attempt. The whole scene 
was a competition between God's power as manifested 
through his servants, Moses and Aaron, and the power 
of Egypt's magicians — resulting in most overwhelm- 
ing proof that the latter had not the first element of 

God's power in it. It follows therefore that if the 

magicians had extra-human help — if they had any 
power beyond human skill, they obtained it from Satan. 
We may readily suppose they were in league with him, 
working according to his will. He may have sharp- 
ened their wits by his influence, helped their arts by 
his suggestions, and possibly may have given them 
superhuman aid in the line of physical power. It is 
not given to us to know the exact limits of his power 
to aid his servants. It is not essential that we should 
know precisely where these limits are. We know 
enough to impress the injunction — " Be sober, be vigil- 
ant, because of your adversary the devil " (1 Pet. 5 : 8). 



THE DEMAND UPON PHARAOH. 193 

It may always be our consolation that whenever he 
matches his pow T er or his skill against the Almighty, 
he will come off, as in the case before us, utterly 
worsted in the fight, overwhelmed with defeat and 
shame. 

4. Some attention should be given to the divine pur- 
pose and policy in shaping the demand made upon 

Pharaoh to let the people go. The point of special 

importance here is one which has been thought to in- 
volve the question of strict moral honesty — it being 
claimed that the divine demand at first ran on this 
- wise : " Let us go three days' journey into the wilderness 
that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God n (Ex. 3 : 18) — 
leaving Pharaoh to assume that, this being granted, 
they would return to his service. 

The facts on this point are : 

(1.) It was never promised or even intimated that 
they would return. If Pharaoh construed the words 
of God and of Moses to imply this, he did so on his 
own responsibility. 

(2.) The demand made upon him that he should let 
the people go was based in part at least on the religious 
duty of sacrificing to God in the wilderness (Ex. 5 : 1, 
3) — an entirely appropriate demand — one which Pha- 
raoh ought to have appreciated, and one which would 
be more likely to have weight with him than any other. 
For he was himself a worshiper of his own gods ; he 
knew the strength of the religious element in human 
nature; he was able to recognize the universal rights of 
conscience by which every man may claim to worship 
God according to his own convictions of duty. If Pha- 
raoh would not yield to this request he would yield to 
none. The policy pursued was, therefore, the most hope- 
ful and the least likely to arouse opposition. 

(3.) Even the severest honesty did not require that the 
Lord should put this demand in its most revolting 
form in the outset. True, he might have said from the 
beginning: " My people shall never return"; but this 
would have at once foreclosed all hope of gaining 
Pharaoh's consent. 

(4.) If the question of the return of the people w r as 
thus left a very little open — or more correctly, was not 
peremptorily closed, it served the better to test the 



194 THE HARDENING OF PHARAOH'S HEART. 

heart of Pharaoh. It left the way open to ply him 
with inducements most likely to be successful ; and at 
the same time if he proved obstinate and self-willed, he 
might show it by bantering over the conditions, hig- 
gling as tradesmen and their customers sometimes do 
over the price, negotiating like diplomatists for the 
most favorable terms. But this was the fault of Pharaoh, 
not of God. 

(5.) Most frequently the demand was made in these 
significant words : " Let my people go that they may 
serve me" (Ex. 8: 1, 20, and 9: 1, 13). Israel is my 
son; his service is due to me and I claim it (Ex. 4 : 22, 
23). You have no right to his services; I demand, 
therefore that you let my son go that he may serve 

me. This is at least sufficiently definite, and is by 

no means open to the slightest imputation of lacking in 
the point of honesty. 

5. The hardening of Pharaoh's heart. 

In this topic, as in the one next preceding, the point 
of chief interest is the moral one — that which locates 
the moral responsibility for the hardening of Pharaoh's 
heart — that which defines and places truthfully the 
really responsible agency in the case. Was this hard- 
ening the work of God, by his immediate hand? Was 
it wrought by his power so exclusively and in such 
modes as to overrule and throw out of account Pharaoh's 
own responsible agency? 

Or was the responsible agency that of Pharaoh only, 
altogether his and his alone ? Did he harden his own 
heart, in the exercise of his own free will, in carrying 
out the purpose and desire of his own soul, essentially 
as other sinners and as all sinners do ? 

This question is one of immensely vital moment. 
Let us approach it with both care and candor. 

We may reach the true answer by studying, 

(1.) The history of the case ; 

(2.) What is said of God's purpose in this matter ; 

(3.) What he has taught us of his character, and of 
his agencies in the existence of sin. 

(1.) The history of the transaction will doubtless 
throw light on the question — How came Pharaoh's 
heart to be hardened? How was it done? 



WHO HARDENED PHARAOH'S HEART? 195 

The history of the transaction, developing the steps 
of the process, bears more vitally upon the question, 
Who is responsible ? — than may at first view be real- 
ized. For, let it be carefully considered : God's ways of 
working by his immediate, direct, exclusive agency 
will forever be mysterious and inscrutable to us. It is 
idle for us to ask — How does God work a miracle ? Of 
course it must be idle for us to inquire after the nat- 
ural law of such working because the very idea of a 
miracle is that of a work not wrought according to any 
known laws of nature. If now the hardening of 
Pharaoh's heart were wrought by God's miraculous, di- 
rect, immediate hand, we shall look in vain for the law 
of his operations. It would be simply preposterous to 
inquire after the laws of mind in accordance with 
which the thing was done — the supposition being that 
it was done according to no known laws of mind what- 
ever. 

On the other hand if Pharaoh hardened his own 
heart, there will be no mystery about it. It so happens 
that we all know but too well how sinners harden their 
own hearts. There is rarely the least difficulty in 
tracing the operations of the human mind and the in- 
fluences of temptation which produce this result. 
Therefore, if the history of the hardening of Pharaoh's 
heart brings out the working of his mind, according to 
the common modes of human sinning — if we see that 
his mind worked as the minds of other proud sinners 
are wont to work under like circumstances, then the 
whole question is settled at once and forever. If we 
can actually see how Pharaoh hardened his own heart 
and can identify the whole process as being the very 
same which occurs in the case of all proud sinners who 
resist God's power and especially resist the appeals of 
his love and mercy, what more can we ask? It were 
worse than idle— it were impious to exonerate Pharaoh 
from the least portion of the moral responsibility 
for his hardened heart and to seek to cast it over upon 
God. 

In entering upon the history of the case, it is well to 
note the attitude of Pharaoh's mind toward the God of 
Israel in the outset. We have it brought out fully 
(Ex. 5 : 1,2) : " Moses and Aaron went in and told 
Pharaoh: 'Thus saith the Lord God of Israel; let my 



196 HARDENING OF PHARAOH'S HEART. 

people go that they may serve me.' And Pharaoh 
said — Who is the Lord that I should obey his voice to 
let Israel go ? I know not the Lord, neither will I let 

Israel go." This is plain ; he says he does not know 

this God ; he does not recognize his authority or admit 
his claims. His soul is full of practical unbelief in 
God — a fact which commonly lies at the bottom of all 

the hardening of sinners' hearts in every age. 

Pharaoh did not at first contemplate crossing swords 
and measuring strong arms with the Almighty God. If 
he had taken this view of the case, he might have 

paused awhile to consider. So it usually is with 

sinners. Unbelief in God conduces to launch them 
upon this terrible conflict. Once committed, they be- 
come more hardened; one sin leads on to more sinning 
till sin becomes incurable — shall we say it ? an uncon- 
trollable madness. 

We may now fitly proceed to give attention to each 
particular case. 

The first miracle (Ex. 7: 10-13) that of changing 
Aaron's rod to a serpent, was rather a test than a plague. 
Pharaoh met it by calling in his magicians to try their 
hand— his thought being, My men can do that ! They 
did seem to do it, and though Aaron's rod-serpent swal- 
lowed up theirs, yet Pharaoh did not love to be con- 
vinced and therefore was not. Under this result, which 
perhaps seemed to him a partial victory, he braced 
himself against God this time. 

Next, in the turning of water into blood we read (Ex. 
7 : 22) : " The magicians did so with their enchant- 
ments, and Pharaoh's heart was hardened." This 
seemed to him a complete success for his side. Nat- 
urally, therefore, his heart is hardened to withstand 
God yet. 

Under the plague of frogs — not by any means one of 
the most severe — Pharaoh seemed to yield ; he at least 
begged the prayers of Moses and Aaron ; and promised 
to let the people go (Ex. 8:8). To make God's hand 
the more distinctly visible, Moses said — Set your own 
time, and I will pray that this plague may cease. 
Done: "but when Pharaoh saw that there was respite, he 
hardened his heart and hearkened not unto them " (8 : 
15). Alas, how he abused God's mercy! God lifted 
the plague — and up springs the old rebellion of his soul 



HISTORY OF THE CASE. 197 

against God. Perhaps he flatters himself that this is 
the last, or he hopes that Moses will pray the rest away 
as he has this ; or, as often happens, the simple sense of 
respite without any particular reasoning in the case 
makes him feel strong again to withstand God. Not 
the least sense of gratitude for the favor — the mercy of 
removing the plague ! how many of the sinners of 
our world have done this very thing! Stricken down 
with sickness, have they not begged for life and be- 
sought the prayers of all the good, and promised the 
Lord that with restoring mercy they would give him 
their hearts and their lives? But when the respite 
came their vows were forgotten; their hearts were 
hardened. 

The plague of lice brings out another element of de- 
praved hearts. The magicians try, but make an utter 
failure, and (what is to Pharaoh more provoking still) 
they frankly declare to him, "This is the finger of 
God." They retire from the contest, and leave Pharaoh 
to fight it out alone. They can help him no longer. 
He is apparently vexed and maddened, but not at all 
subdued. Rather, he rouses himself to greater despera- 
tion, for the record puts these points in the closest con- 
nection : the frank admission, " This is the finger of 
God"; and the stiffening of Pharaoh's rebellious will — 
"And Pharaoh's heart was hardened and he hearkened 
not unto them." 

The plague of flies brings out yet another element of 
human nature which not unfrequently comes into play 
in the hardening of men's hearts against God — viz. the 
habit of bantering — shall we say dickering, driving a 
bargain and quibbling over the terms and conditions 
of God's requirements. The flies are terribly annoy- 
ing: Pharaoh sees that something must be done; in 
fact he concludes he must make some concessions : so he 
calls for Moses and Aaron and says — "Go ye, sacrifice 
to your God in the land. 77 The last words were em- 
phatic — in this land : stay here, and you shall have time 
to offer your sacrifices. I can not let you go three days 
journey into the wilderness lest ye never come 

back. Moses insists on the original terms; and then 

Pharaoh concedes yet a little more: "I will let you go 
that ye may sacrifice to the Lord your God in the wil- 
derness, only ye shall not go very far away. Entreat for 



198 HARDENING OF PHARAOH'S HEART. 

me n — i. e. entreat the Lord to take away these flies — 
the same word being used here as in v. 8. Moses en- 
treated : the Lord removed the plague, and according to 
the record " Pharaoh hardened his heart at this time 
also, neither would he let the people go." Allowing 
himself to make terms with God and to banter him 
upon the conditions, coupled with the respite — the 
temporary relief found in the removal of the plague — 
are manifestly the causes and modes in this case of his 
hardening his own heart. 

Next is the plague of murrain — a terrible loss of their 
cattle. In the antecedent threatening of this plague, 
Moses said to Pharaoh, " The Lord will sever between 
the cattle of Israel and the cattle of Egypt : there shall 
nothing die of all that belongs to Israel." So it was; 
for we read — "Pharaoh sent [i. e, to inquire] and lo! 
not one of the cattle of the Israelites was dead. And 
the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, and he did not let 
the people go " (9 : 1-7). This discrimination gave a 
keener edge to the plague ; it cut the deeper; but in the 
result it only maddened him the more. It showed 
most clearly that God's hand was in these plagues and 
that he was on the side of Israel; but Pharaoh was 
committed to the contest and seemed to have but the 
one ruling purpose — to fight it out to the bitter end. 

The plague of boils was a visitation of physical suf- 
fering, perhaps somewhat adapted to make a fretful 
man irritable. The narrative notes the circumstance 
that the magicians were completely broken down by 
this plague: "They could not stand before Moses be- 
cause of the boils, for the boil was upon the magicians 
and upon all the Egyptians [not upon the Israelites]. 
As to Pharaoh, all human help fails him ; every man 
among his people seems to quail and give up the con- 
test ; yet his proud heart is only the more maddened 
and the more determined ! It is said, " The Lord hard- 
ened the heart of Pharaoh and he hearkened not unto 
them;" but such mad infatuation is wont to appear in 
depraved human souls without any miraculous in- 
fliction of hardness from the hand of God. There is 
not the least occasion to assume any other influences 
than those of a proud, maddened human heart, working 
out its own obstinate will against God. 

The hail with attendant thunder and lightning 



HISTORY OF THE CASE. 199 

(next in order) were fearfully appalling. All Egyp- 
tian hearts seemed to quiver with terror under this in- 
fliction. Pharaoh is brought (shall we say) to his 
knees : he sends hastily for Moses and Aaron and says 
to them : " I have sinned this time ; the Lord is right- 
eous and I and my people are wicked." Truly this 
seems hopeful. For the first time he appears penitent. 
" Entreat the Lord (for it is enough) that there be no 
more mighty thunderings and hail ; and I will let you 

go and ye shall stay no longer." This seems to be a 

final victory over the proud heart and the long time 
inflexible will of Pharaoh. He confesses sin ; he begs 
again for prayer ; he promises to yield to God's entire 
demand and let the people go. Consequently the 
plague was removed. "And when Pharaoh saw that 
the rain and the hail and the thunder were ceased, he 
sinned yet more and hardened his heart, he and his 
servants." Alas for man's perverse and false na- 
ture — his proud heart and his lying lips ! How read- 
ily he relapses back into his old and much-loved sin 
and becomes more hardened than ever! The judg- 
ments of God extort confessions and tears and prayers ; 
but God's mercies let off this pressure and leave the 
guilty soul to fly back to its old sins again. So it was 
with Pharaoh. God's mercies, abused, worked out his 
ruin. But it were simply monstrous to say that this 
showing of mercy is on God's part a moral wrong and 
that it throws over upon him the moral responsibility 
of hardening the sinner's heart. Yet it was precisely 
in this way — perhaps more really and potently than in 
any other — that God hardened the heart of Pharaoh. 

The plague of locusts brings to view a new group of 
elements. Egypt had known something about locusts 
before : so when this scourge was announced, Pharaoh's 
servants beg him to yield the contest. "How long 
shall this man " [Moses] " be a snare unto us ? Let the 
men go that they may serve the Lord their God. 
Knowest thou not yet that Egypt is destroyed"? (10: 

7). Pharaoh yields to their entreaty only so far as to 

send for Moses and Aaron, and again try his hand upon 
bantering with them and with God over the condi- 
tions. " Go serve the Lord, said he ; but who are they 
that shall go"? Moses answers, Every thing must go; 
we with our young and with our old; with sons and 



200 HARDENING OF PHARAOH'S HEART. 

with daughters ; with flocks and with herds — all, abso- 
lutely all must go. No indeed, replies Pharaoh — with 

what we must take as his royal oath — with the most 
fearful threat he could make and the most solemn 
asseveration — he says, "Not so; go ye that are men and 
serve the Lord, for that ye did desire." That was all 
ye asked at first : it is the utmost I shall give ! "And 
they were driven out of his presence." Pharaoh is 
thoroughly mad! This allowing himself to banter 
them as to the terms of the arrangement helped him to 
a stronger feeling of his own importance. He seemed 
to himself to be yet more a king on his throne, and 

why should not he dictate the conditions ? Soon the 

plague comes, and for the moment it quite changes the 
face of affairs. " Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron 
in haste, and said [again] — " I have sinned against the 
Lord your God and against you. Now, therefore, for- 
give, I pray thee, my sin only this once, and entreat 
the Lord your God that he may take away from me 
this death only." Apparently he remembers that once 
before he confessed, and more than once has begged 
their prayers, and more than once has promised to let 
the people go. So he labors to give a little more em- 
phasis to his beseechings this time by confessing his 
sin against Moses, and especially by the limitation — 
"for this once " — once more do hear me — this time only. 
But he has been through this very process once before ; 
most of its points, many times before ; and it is much 
more easy for him to turn back upon every promise 
and break every most solemn vow than it ever has 
been before. It is safe to predict that any sinner who 
has broken so many solemn vows of amendment will 
never do any thing better than break vows when 
God's mercy lifts off the plague. So Pharaoh's heart is 
hardened yet again. The statement is — " But the Lord 
hardened Pharaoh's heart" — yet the way he did it, 
here as before (9: 34), was by removing the plague; by 
hearing his prayer for relief and apparently trusting 
his sacred promise to let the people go. This was the 
way and these the agencies by which the Lord hard- 
ened Pharaoh's heart. 

The plague of darkness is next in order. Again Pha- 
raoh sets himself to negotiate as to the terms. He will 
consent that not only the men may go, but their wives 



HISTORY OF THE CASE. 201 

and their little ones; but their flocks must be left behind. 
He must have some hostages — something left in his 
hands that will bring his bondmen back. Moses says 
No/ we need our flocks for sacrifice; not a hoof is to 
be left behind ! Pharaoh is more mad than ever : he 
not only drives Moses out from his presence, but adds — 
" Take heed to thyself; see my face no more ; for in the 
day thou seest my face thou shalt die." In this case it 
is said — "The Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart"; but 
these terrible uprisings and outbursts of madness well 
up from the depths of a depraved sinner's soul. No su- 
pernatural miracle of divine hardening is at all needful 
to create them. Pharaoh is too proud a king to bear 
such confrontings of his will. Shall he yield to such a 
man as Moses, or even to the God of Moses? Not he. 
It stirs up all the elements of his pride and madness 
to have his propositions of compromise so peremptorily 
rejected. It is this in special that works in this present 
case to the hardening of his heart. 

There remains but one more plague— that awful 
night on Egypt when the wailing cry rang out over 
all the land, " for there was not a house where there was 
not one dead " ! and that the first-born / Under this, 
Pharaoh for the time really broke down; he called for 
Moses and Aaron by night and said — Go ye and all your 
people, and take your flocks and herds as ye have said 
and be gone, and bless me also." This conceded every- 
thing, closing off with begging their blessing upon his 
consciously guilty soul! The Egyptians too were all 
astir; "they were urgent upon the people to send them 
out of the land in haste; for they said — "We be all 

dead men." And the people of Israel do really go. 

But strange as it may seem, when "it was told the king 
of Egypt that the people had really gone, then the 
heart of Pharaoh and of his servants was turned against 
the people and they said — "Why have we done this 
that we have let Israel go from serving us " ? Forth- 
with armed chariots are made ready and are off in hot 
pursuit ; — till they find themselves battling the mighty 
waves of the Red Sea, quailing before the awful eye and 

under the uplifted arm of the Almighty ! This last 

instance of hardening the heart seems most like pure 
and simple infatuation. No doubt Pharaoh and his 
servants had a fresh sense of what they had lost in 



202 HARDENING OF PHARAOH'S HEART. 

letting go such a host of hard working bondmen. No 
doubt they also felt the mortification of having been 
worsted in the long-fought struggle over this national 
question of letting the people go ; but after all they had 
seen and felt of God's power to curse and to plague and 
to crush them, nothing but the most senseless infatua- 
tion can rationally account for this last desperate dash 
upon Israel with the armed force of the nation. Yet no 
one will say that such infatuation does not often appear 
in the history of human sinning. In his own sphere 
many a poor sinner is just as madly infatuated as Pha- 
raoh and his people were — is altogether as senseless, as 
void of wisdom, as reckless of the hot thunderbolts of 
the Almighty ! It is an awfully sad fact, a most humili- 
ating confession as to the manner of human sinning ; 
but it is only too true ! There is no need of assuming 
any direct supernatural divine interposition to produce 
it. 

Nothing more seems necessary to complete the argu- 
ment from the history of the case unless it be to sug- 
gest that when we have accounted for the hardening 
of Pharaoh's heart satisfactorily on the one principle — 
the well-known proclivities and activities of a proud, 
stubborn human heart, it is entirely unphilosophical to 
bring in another principle, viz. the miraculous, imme- 
diate, direct action of Almighty Power. When we have 
proved the former power adequate to produce all the 
results, we have virtually precluded the latter. There 
can be no reason whatever for assuming a joint, co-ordi- 
nate action of both the natural laws of the human mind 
and of the supernatural power of God. If the former 
suffices, the latter is uncalled for. Miracles are never 
to be assumed where non-miraculous agency is fully ad- 
equate. 

If it be still argued that the very words declare, " God 
hardened Pharaoh's heart," the answer is : God is said 
to do what he foresees will be done by others and done 
under such arrangements of his providence as make it 
possible and morally certain that they will do it. Jos- 
eph said to his brethren (Gen. 45 : 5, 7, 8), " Be not 
angry with yourselves that ye sold me hither, for God 
did send me before you to preserve life. So now it was 
not you that sent me hither but God." Yet it is simply 
impious to put the sin of selling Joseph into Egypt over 



god's purpose and agency. 203 

upon God. God did it only in the same sense in which 
he hardened Pharaoh's heart. He had a purpose to sub- 
serve by means of the sin of Joseph's brethren ; and he 
did no doubt permit such circumstances to occur in his 
providence as made that sin possible and as resulted in 
their sinning and in the remote consequences which 
God anticipated. 

It is of no particular use for us to find fault with the 
way in which the Scriptures speak of God's hand in the 
existence of sin. There is no special mystery about it. 
It certainly does not involve the least moral obliquity 
on God's part; and it is therefore every way prudent 
and wise to interpret such language in harmony with 
the common sense of the case and with the well-known 
character of God. 

2. We proceed to notice what is said of God's purpose 
in the hardening of Pharaoh's heart. It is the more im- 
portant to speak of this because an extreme view is 
sometimes taken of the central passage (Ex. 9 : 14-16) ; 
" And in very deed for this cause have I raised thee up 
for to show in thee my power," etc. The extreme view 
referred to is that God made Pharaoh a great king, put 
him on a high throne, for the avowed purpose of dis- 
playing his own great power in his sin and punish- 
ment. 

By consent of Hebrew lexicographers, the verb trans- 
lated "raised up " means in this case preserved alive — have 
caused thee to stand or continue among the living. The 
previous context moreover seems not to be quite accu- 
rately put in our English version. It should rather be 
thus, beginning with v. 14 : " For at this very time I 
am sending [present tense] all my plagues to thine 
heart and upon thy servants and upon thy people that 
thou mayest know that there is none like me in all the 
earth. For I might now have stretched out my hand 
and smitten thee and thy people with pestilence \i. e. 
might have smitten you all dead], and thou wouldest 
have been cut off from the earth. But truly for this 
very reason have I preserved thee alive to the end that 
thou mightest show forth [make others see] my power, 
and for the sake of proclaiming my name in all the 
earth." To the same purport are the words (Ex. 14: 
17, 18) with reference to the final destruction of Pha- 



204 HARDENING OF PHARAOH'S HEART. 

raoh's host ; " And I will get me honor upon Pharaoh 
and upon all his host, etc. And the Egyptians shall 
know that I am the Lord when I shall have gotten me 
honor upon Pharaoh and upon his chariots and his 
horsemen." The great thought is that God turns to ac- 
count the sin and madness of Pharaoh for the purpose 
of making known his power to save his people and to 
crush their foes. He shapes his ways of providence to 
this end. He might have swept off Pharaoh and his 
people with the same pestilence which destroyed so 
many of their cattle ; but he had a wiser purpose. He 
could make a better use of their sin and of their life ; 
so he spared them till he had wrought all his wonders 
upon Egypt before all the nations of the earth ; and 
then he let them plunge into the mighty waves of the 

Red Sea and make their grave there ! Now if wicked 

men will sin, who shall object against God that he makes 
the best possible use of it ? Why may he not reveal 
his power thereby and exalt his name as one "mighty 
to save " or to destroy ? 

3. It only remains to ask — What has God taught us 
of his character as bearing on the question before us, 
and of his agencies in the existence of sin? 

Here few words ought to suffice. Nothing can be 
more plain than the revelations of scripture concerning 
God's character as infinitely pure and holy — as a Being 
who not only can never sin himself but can never be 
pleased to have others sin, and above all can never put 
forth his power to make them sin, God can not be 
tempted with evil, " neither tempteth he any man " (Jam. 
1 : 13). When he declares so solemnly and so tenderly : 
" O do not that abominable thing which I hate " ! shall 
it still be said — But he puts men to sinning; pushes 
them on in their sin ; inclines their heart to sin and 
hardens them to more and guiltier sinning? Never! 

Shall it be claimed that with one hand God gives his 
Spirit to impress the truth on human souls unto their 
salvation ; and with the other sends his Spirit to aug- 
ment the forces of temptation and to harden men's 
hearts unto their damnation ? Shall the same fountain 
send forth both sweet water and bitter ? Shall the same 
God renew some human hearts unto holiness and 
harden other human hearts in sin — all by the same 
direct and similarly purposed agency, each work being 



ARGUMENT FROM GOD'S CHARACTER. 205 

done under the same impulses of infinite love?- 



Surely there must be some egregious misconception of 
God's character involved in supposing him capable of 
acts so fundamentally opposite and incompatible — not 
to say, in supposing him capable of tempting men 
into more and greater sin ! 

The fact that He wisely and mightily over-rules sin 
to bring good forth from it should never be construed 
to imply that he abhors sin any the less because he can 
extort some good results from its existence. 



CHAPTER XIII. 
THE PASSOVER. 

The first of the three great annual festivals of Israel, 
and the one which above all was commemorative in 
character — a memorial service — was the Passover. It 
was designed to commemorate the deliverance of Israel 
from Egyptian bondage — the great birth-hour of the 
Hebrew nation. Especially did it commemorate the 
scenes of that last eventful night when God caused his 
angel of death to pass over the houses of Israel as he 
went through the land of Egypt, smiting the first-born 
in all her households. The central thing in this in- 
stitution was the slaying of the paschal lamb — one for 
each household — and the sprinkling of its blood upon 
the two side-posts, and upon the lintel over the door of 
each house. This sprinkled blood, seen by the destroy- 
ing angel, became his authority for passing over and by 
that house, sparing its first-born, while he spared not 
one first-born of alt the families of Egypt. 

There were numerous collateral points in the insti- 
tution, designed to fill it out more completely and 
make it most impressively a memorial service for all 
the future generations of Israel ; e. g. the following : 

As to time; it was on the fourteenth day of the month 
Abib, corresponding to our March or April — the night 
next following this day being that of the last plague 
on Egypt — the night which broke their yoke of bond- 



206 THE PASSOVER. 

age. Henceforth, this was made the first month in the 
Hebrew year. 

The paschal lambs were taken by households. If the 
family was large, it stood by itself; if too small to con- 
sume one lamb, then two or more were united, the aim 
being to have the flesh of the lamb eaten entire. If 
any thing remained, it was to be burned in the morn- 
ing. — It was to be roasted with fire, not eaten raw, and 
not boiled in water. (Ex. 12 : 8, 9.) The arrangement 
by families looked toward the great fact of the original 
event — that Egypt was smitten by families — there being 
not a house in which there was not one dead. Its in- 
fluence must have been precious through all the ages 
of Hebrew history in cementing family ties and sancti- 
fying the family relation. 

It was eaten with unleavened bread — the rule on this 
point being most stringent. No leaven might be eaten 
or even seen in their households during the entire feast 
of seven days. So prominent was this fact that the 
feast was called interchangeably, "The Passover," or 
" The feast of unleavened bread." The original de- 
sign of this prohibition seems to have been commem- 
orative — the great haste of their departure precluding 
the preparation of leavened bread for their journey. 
The allusions to "leaven" in the New Testament (Matt. 
16: 6, 11, 12, and Luke 12 and 1 Cor. 5: 7) indicate 
that leaven was associated with "pride that puffeth 
up," and is quite the opposite of that simplicity and 
purity of heart which God loves. 

It was also eaten with bitter herbs, the vegetable 
condiments of the supper suggesting the bitterness of 
that bondage in Egypt out of which they came (Ex. 

12 : 8). Yet another suggestive memorial usage was 

to eat with loins girt, shoes on, staff in hand (Ex. 12 : 
11), and in haste, as men ready to start a journey at 
a moment's warning. 

The feast continued seven days (Ex. 12 : 14-20), be- 
ginning with the evening of the paschal supper. The 
first day and the last were specially sacred, all labor 
being prohibited except that which was necessary in 

preparing their food (Ex. 12: 16). The object in 

allowing so much time was to provide for extended re- 
ligious ceremonial services and for wholesome social 
communion, not to say also for cultivating national 



THE PASSOVER. 207 

sympathy and patriotism As all the males from every 
tribe in the whole land were required to come together 
on this great feast to the one place which God should ap- 
point, the convocation was vast, and its social and relig- 
ious influences were naturally both wholesome and great. 

In the original institution it was specially enjoined 
that the history and purpose of this great festival 
should be made known to their children. " And thou shalt 
shoiv thy son in that day, saying, This is done because 
of that which the Lord did unto me when I came forth 
out of Egypt" (Ex. 13: 7). "And it shall be when 
thy son asketh thee in time to come, saying, What is 
this ? that thou shalt say unto him, By strength of 
hand the Lord brought us out from Egypt, from the 
house of bondage," etc. (Ex. 13 : 14, 15.) How natu- 
rally would this wonderful story thrill the young hearts 
around the paschal board! How swiftly would the 
hours fly away while fathers rehearsed to sons the great 
national traditions, or read from the book of the law 
the narrative, and sung again and again the song of 
triumph over Pharaoh fallen with which this story 
closes! Jewish history has it that in ancient times it 
became the custom, after the paschal table was fully 
spread and the family had taken their places about it, 
for the servant suddenly to remove the prepared food 
away. Then when the hungry children opened their 
eyes wide and eager lips cried out — What does this 
mean? the head of the household rehearsed slowly and 
solemnly the meaning and purpose of the feast, with 
the history of its original institution ; then when the 
curiosity of the little ones had been both aroused and 
enlightened, the provisions were replaced and partaken 
with a freshened sense of the grand significance of the 
Passover. 

Closely associated with this festival and fraught with 
solemn significance as a memorial institution was the 
consecration to God of all first-born males, both the first- 
born of man and the first-born of beast (Ex. 13 : 11-16). 
Of the lower animals the first-born males, if without 
blemish and if suitable for sacrifice, were to be offered 
in sacrifice to the Lord. If not suitable (e. g. the ass), 
it must be redeemed with a lamb — in which case the 
lamb became the sacrifice, and the ass might be used at 
the pleasure of its owner. 
10 



208 THE PASSOVER. 

In the family, the first-born son was consecrated to 
God. In carrying out this principle, a substitution was 
made by which the entire tribe of Levi were put in the 
place of all the first-born males of Israel and held to be 
specially consecrated to God. The language (Num. 8 : 
14-18) is — "Thou shalt separate the Levites from among 
the children of Israel, and the Levites shall be mine. 
They are wholly given unto me from among the chil- 
dren of Israel, instead of such as open every womb, even 
instead of the first-born of all the children of Israel, 
have I taken them unto me. For all the first-born of 
Israel are mine both man and beast : on the day that I 
smote every first-born in the land of Egypt, I sanctified 
them for myself. And I have taken the Levites for [in 
the place of] all the first-born of the children of Israel." 

The law prescribed the rites by which the Levites 

were set apart (Num. 8 : 5-15). 

The original institution of the Passover is rehearsed 
quite fully in Ex. 12 and 13 ; is referred to again briefly 
Ex. 23: 15, and 34 : 18-20 — this last giving emphasis to 
the consecration of the first-born. A brief notice of it 
appears Lev. 23 : 5-8 ; the accompanying ritual services 
and offerings may be seen in Num. 28 : 16-25 ; and a 
brief resume of the institution as given in Exodus 12 
and 13 stands in Deut. 16 : 1-8. 

The Paschal Lamb with its sprinkled blood became a 
pertinent and impressive illustration of the central 
idea of the atonement by the blood of Christ, the ele- 
ments common to both being — the shedding of blood — 
the blood of an innocent one — and especially the pass- 
ing over the sprinkled souls by the destroying angel, 
while the unsprinkled were smitten by God's angel of 

death. It is under the force of these and similar 

analogies that Paul speaks of Christ as being "our 
Passover" — [rather our Paschal Lamb], and as "sacri- 
ficed for us " (1 Cor. 5 : 6-8). Pushing the analogies of 
the Passover feast one step further, he thinks of the ex- 
clusion of all leaven ; then of leaven as naturally dif- 
fusive, and so as representing the pernicious influence 
of bad men in the Christian church ; and therefore ex- 
horts the Corinthian church to cast out the man guilty 

of incest lest his influence work like leaven. These 

remoter analogies were forcible to persons familiar with 



THE LONG ROUTE TO CANAAN. 209 

the feast and its usages ; yet we can not say they were 
properly involved in the typical significance of the 
Passover. The easy and natural manner in which 
Paul speaks of Christ as our Paschal Lamb shows that 
so far the resemblance w T as a well recognized fact, 
wrought into the current views of inspired men, not to 
say, of the church of that age. Without the shedding 
of blood there is no remission ; with it and by means 
of it remission comes to the guilty, accepting it with 
penitence and with faith. 

The long route to Canaan. 

Scarcely had the Hebrew hosts set forth for Goshen 
before the question of the route to Canaan must be de- 
termined. That Canaan was their destination was 
settled long before. The first call of Abram designated 
the land of Canaan as the home of his posterity. 
Every renewal of that original promise specified the 
country which was given them. Now, for the course of 
their journey, the route along the south-eastern shore 
of the Mediterranean through the land of the Phil- 
istines was short and direct ; but it must have brought 
them into contact inevitably with those powerful 
tribes from whom their descendants suffered so much 
during all the centuries intervening between Joshua 
and David. Just emerging from a bondage which 
spanned several generations and which had emascu- 
lated them of all national courage and spirit — but 
slightly trained moreover yet into the moral heroism 
which comes of living faith in God — they were in no 
condition to encounter such enemies. The record puts 
these points briefly: "God led them not through the 
way of the land of the Philistines although that was 
near, for God said — Lest peradventure the people repent 
when they see war and they return to Egypt ; but God 
led the people about through the way of the wilderness 
of the Red Sea "* (Ex. 13 : 17, 18). The long circuitous 
route is therefore chosen. Wheeling suddenly to the 

* That this fear was by no means groundless appears in the panic 
which smote their hearts when they saw Pharaoh's host pursuing 
(Ex.14: 10-12), and also in the unbelieving fear manifested on 
hearing the report of ten of the spies returned from their forty days 
traversing of Canaan (Num. 13: 28, 31-33, and 14: 1-4). 



210 THE MARCH AND THE PURSUIT. 

right they put their faces squarely toward the Red Sea, 
beyond which lay the vast Arabian desert. Ultimately 
they entered Canaan on its Eastern and not its 
Western side — the quarter most remote from the Phil- 
istines. In this wilderness route there were great 

purposes to be accomplished in the moral training and 
culture of the nation and in the manifestations of the 
God of their fathers before their eyes. That way lay 
the passage of the Red Sea which God provided as the 
burial-place for the proud hosts of Pharaoh : that way 
lay Sinai — those grand mountain cliffs which God was 
to shake with his thunders and invest with the smoke 
and the flame of his glorious presence that the law 
might be written in letters of fire upon the souls of the 
whole people : that way lay the long, breadless, water- 
less route of almost forty years wandering and sojourn- 
ing in which the Lord fed the people with angels' 
food — bread from the lower heavens — the manna of 
the desert, and with water once and again from 
smitten rocks, flowing in dry places as a river — that 
they might learn the power and the love of their God : — 
that way lay also their long tuition and training into 
their religious system — a wonderful arrangement of 
sacrifices and ordinances for which the life-time of a 
generation was scarcely too long. All these great re- 
sults and yet others were contemplated and provided 
for in this choice of the wilderness route as their way to 
the land of Canaan. 

The March and the Pursuit. 

The night of the fourteenth day of the first month 
was one to be long and gratefully remembered. Little 
sleep was there in the homes of Israel or in the dwell- 
ings of Egypt on that eventful night. The feast of the 
Paschal Lamb beginning with the early evening; the 
dread visitation upon Egypt of the angel of death at 
midnight; the hasty preparation for their journey 
throughout all the families of the children of Israel; 
the gathering and mustering of their hosts for the 
march of the next day: — such was the work of that 
memorable night. The stages of their march are 
definitely chronicled; one day from Rameses to Succoth 
(Ex. 12: 37); another day from Succoth to Etham, "in 



THE PILLAR OF CLOUD AND FIRE. 211 

the edge of the wilderness" (Ex. 13 : 20) ; another from 
Etham to Pi-hahiroth between Migdol and the Sea over 
against Baal-zephon (Ex. 14 : 2). The same stages ap- 
pear in the official record (Num. 33 : 3-8) in which it is 
added that " Israel went out with a high hand in the 
sight of all the Egyptians, for the Egyptians buried all 
their first-born whom the Lord had smitten among 
them; upon the gods also, the Lord executed judg- 
ment " * — so that the shock of such and so much death 
and their funeral services for the dead diverted their 
attention from Israel and detained them from the pur- 
suit for a season, giving the slow moving hosts of Israel 
time to reach the Red Sea before Pharaoh's swift chariots 
could overtake them. 

The guiding Pillar of cloud and fire. 

At this stage commenced that striking but most 
precious manifestation of God's guiding presence, of 
which the first record is — "And the Lord went before 
them in a pillar of a cloud to lead them the way ; and 
by night in a pillar of fire to give them light ; to go by 
day and night. He took not away the pillar of the 
cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night, from 
before the people (Ex. 13 : 21, 22). If the order of the 
narration corresponds in time to the order of the events, 
this manifestation of the pillar commenced on the sec- 
ond day of their march as they moved from Succoth to 
Etham " in the edge of the wilderness." All through 
those otherwise dreary days of their marching and halt- 
ing for forty years in the wilderness, this pillar was be- 
fore them, appearing as a pillar of cloud by day but of 
fire by night — the symbol of Jehovah's presence in all 
their way, leading their path as they journeyed; mark- 
ing their place of rest where they were to halt and 

pitch their tents. Subsequent allusions to this pillar 

of cloud or of fire are somewhat numerous, e. g. Ex. 29 : 
43 — showing that in this pillar God met his people and 
sanctified the tabernacle with his glory : Ex. 40 : 34-38, 

* Connecting the fact given in profane history that Egypt wor- 
shiped the ox and the cow as gods, with the fact of sacred history — 
that all the first-born of their cattle fell in this fearful plague, we 
shall understand how signally God "executed judgment on Egypt's 
gods.' 1 



212 THE PILLAR OF CLOUD AND FIRE. 

setting forth that when the tabernacle was in readiness, 
the cloud covered it and the glory of the Lord filled the 
most holy place, making that henceforth his special lo- 
cality. Yet the pillar of cloud was lifted above the 
tabernacle as the signal for striking tents and moving 
forward. Its service as the signal for marching or rest- 
ing is detailed minutely and beautifully in Num. 9: 
15-23; and the prayer of Moses on these special occa- 
sions in Num. 10 : 35, 36. When the ark set forward — 
" Rise up, Lord, and let thine enemies be scattered and 
let them that hate thee flee before thee " ; and when it 
rested — " Return, Lord, unto the many thousands of 

Israel." Other allusions may be seen, Deut. 1 : 23 and 

Neh. 9: 12, 19 and Ps. 78: 14, and 99: 7, and 105: 39 
and Isa. 4 : 5. 

Remarkably when the Egyptian chariots and horse- 
men drew near toward evening of the third days' march, 
"the Angel of God, [embosomed in this pillar] which 
had been in front of their host, removed and went be- 
hind them" — putting himself thus between the men of 
Israel and the armed hosts of Egypt — "And it was a 
cloud and darkness to Egypt's hosts but gave light by 
night to Israel, so that the one came not near the other 
all night." Thus the angel of God in the cloud became, 
not their guide only, but their protector, their guardian 
angel. If there were godly men in Israel who like Moses 
could appreciate the salvation and the glory of Jehovah's 
presence, their hearts must have been a thousand times 
gladdened, and inspired with ixexpressible hope and 
consolation as they lifted up their eyes in their other- 
wise deepest darkness to see the pillar of fire ever near, 
the witness that God was near in all their wander- 
ings. But especially there with the Red Sea before them 
and the chariots of Pharaoh behind — how safe they 
might have felt ! for who is not safe under the wing of 
God's pillar of fire ? 

When Pharaoh's chariots and horsemen came in sight, 
rapidly gaining upon the slow-marching footmen of 
Israel's host, the latter were sore afraid and cried unto 
the Lord (Ex. 14 : 10). This crying to the Lord would 
have been all right if only they had believed and trusted ; 
for then they would have honored their great Protector, 
and they would not have chided Moses for leading them 
out of Egypt, nor would they have thought so readily 



PHARAOH IN THE RED SEA. 213 

of turning back to their cruel bondage. With touch- 
ing forbearance and grace the reply of Moses (from God) 
breathes scarce a whisper of rebuke : " Fear ye not; stand 
still and see the salvation of the Lord which he will 
show to you to day ; for the Egyptians whom ye have 
seen to day, ye shall see no more again forever. The 
Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace." 
The Lord did not propose to bring the people into direct 
battle with the trained hosts of Egypt at this early stage 
of their new life of freedom. They were in no manner 
prepared for the conflict of arms. This time the Lord 
alone would go into battle against Egypt. Israel might 
stand still and look on ! 

Moses, it seems, cried unto God ; but whether because 
there was some implied unbelief in it, or because there 
was no time and no further need of prayer, the Lord 
answered — "Why criest thou unto me? Speak unto the 
people that they go forward "/ The time for action and for 

placid trust in God had fully come. But that deep 

Red Sea lies across thy path ; lift up thy rod and stretch 
out thy hand over the sea and divide it; let Israel march 
through it dry-shod. The uplifted rod of Moses was the 
signal for the uplifted hand of God by which he forced 
the waters from their channel by a strong east wind 
all that night and made the bed of the sea dry for his 
people to pass over. The miracle in this case w r as ex- 
erted upon the wind rather than upon the water. God 
caused the east wind to blow strongly just when its effect 
was needed for the end in view. He turned the wind 
and hurried the waters back upon the Egyptians just 
when the opportune moment came for burying them 
beneath its mountain waves. If his wisdom had chosen 
to do so, his Almighty hand could just as easily have 
annihilated so much of the Red Sea waters as lay in 
the way of his people till they had passed its dry bed, 
and then have reproduced them for the destruction of 
Egypt. But in his mighty works God does not seek 
display but rather results, and these ordinarily by using 
only the least amount of supernatural agency which 
w T ill suffice. It is of little account to attempt to fix the 
law of miracles, yet we may not infrequently observe 
the same method as is apparent here. 

The historian alludes to yet another element of divine 
agency. In the morning watch as the host of Pharaoh 



214 PHARAOH IN THE RED SEA. 

were pressing on through the very midst of the bed of 
the sea, " the Lord looked unto the host of the Egyptians 
through the pillar of fire and of cloud, and troubled [rather 
confounded, smote with panic] their marching hosts ; 
and took off their chariot wheels that they drave them 
heavily; so that the Egyptians said — Let us flee from 
the face of Israel, for Jehovah figheth for them against 

the Egyptians." It may not be possible, certainly is 

not specially important, to draw the line here between 
the natural and the supernatural. We may suppose 
that the pillar of cloud which had been darkness to them 
blazed forth fearfully in their faces, appalling the stout- 
est hearts with fear ; that both horses and drivers were 
confounded ; that wheel crashed into wheel and made 
advance impossible ; that turning back for flight, their 
disorder and confusion became a rout, and that in this 
hour of crisis the returning waters surge and dash upon 
them and bury them en masse beneath the mountain 
waves! So perished the slave-holders and oppressors 
of God's ancient people ! Thus signally did Jehovah 
exalt his name and win glory to himself as the Aven- 
ger of the oppressed and the faithful God of his Israel. 
The case falls into the same class with the flood and the 
fires on Sodom, to show before the ages how readily the 
Lord can find fit instruments of retributive justice for 
the swift punishment of the wicked even in this world 
whenever examples are needed to set forth his dipleas- 
ure against sin, and the certainty of his retributions 
upon the wicked. Under a system which normally puts 
over this retribution till after death, it might obviously 
be wise in the early ages of time to give some excep- 
tional cases to stand as illustrations squarely before the 
eyes of living men, witnessing to the terrors of that 
retribution which can not linger long under the gov- 
ernment of a just and holy God. 

The night of doom to Pharaoh was the night of re- 
demption to Israel. With the morning light they 
"saw the Egyptians dead upon the sea-shore " — men in 
their armor of battle ; horses in the proud trappings of 
Egypt; broken chariots, all powerless now — are dashed 
up by the waves of the turbid sea and lie strewn upon 
the eastern shore — memorials at once of the danger that 
was and of the victory and triumph that are, and that 



THE SONG OF VICTORY. 215 

are to be, the joy of God's redeemed people. Most fitly 
the deep emotions of the people seek expression in song. 
The oldest song known to history and one of the grand- 
est, is here before us. " I will sing unto the I^ord, for 
he hath triumphed gloriously :" — Ah, indeed, it was the 
Lord who wrought the victory ; w r ho went down alone 
into that eventful battle and who came back the 
mighty conqueror ! " The horse and his rider hath he 
thrown into the sea." Over and over this central idea 
appears : " Pharaoh's chariots and his host hath he cast 
into the sea; his chosen chariots also are drowned in 
the Red Sea." "Thou didst blow with thy wind; the 
sea covered them ; they sank as lead in the mighty 
waters." Let the Great God of Israel be praised for all 
this ! Appropriately this is the burden of the song : 
" The Lord is my strength and my song, and he is be- 
come my salvation." " Who is like unto thee, O Lord, 
among the gods? Who is like to Thee, glorious in 
holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders " ? 

Let us hope that the hearts of the saved people were 
deeply moved in the spirit of this sublime song ; that 
they saw God as never before, and gave him the hom- 
age of their hearts, grateful, trustful, and adoring! 

It may be noticed that Moses leads the thought of 
the people forward to the remote results of this redemp- 
tion: "The nations shall hear and be afraid; sorrow 
shall take hold on the inhabitants of Palestine ; all the 
inhabitants of Canaan shall melt away ; fear and dread 
shall fall upon them .... till thy people pass over and 
thou hast planted them in their promised inheritance." 

The moral results of this scene, we may hope, were 
really wholesome and effective upon the multitude. It 
amazes us to find that so soon afterward there were 
some among them who murmured for water, rebelled 
against Moses, made and worshiped a calf of gold : but 
the young, less depraved by their Egyptian life and 
perhaps more impressible by such manifestations of 
God, seem to have drank in the solemn lessons of these 
grand events. 

The locality of the Red Sea crossing has been not a little 
controverted — until the researches of modern times. 
Since Dr. Robinson's personal examination of that 
region, including the site of Goshen, the route of their 
three days' travel till they reached the sea, the width 



216 THE LOCALITY OF THE RED SEA CROSSING. 

of the sea at the various points between which the 
selection must be made, there has been a general if not 
universal concurrence in the conclusions to which he 
came. The location a little below Suez where the sea 
was supposably not far from one mile in width ; where 
a strong easterly wind would drive out the waters from 
the channel — seems to fulfill all the historical condi- 
tions of the problem. See his Researches in Egypt and 
Palestine, Vol. I. pp. 74-86. 



CHAPTER XIV. 



THE HISTORIC CONNECTIONS OF MOSES WITH PHA- 
RAOH AND EGYPT. 

T.he thread of our history having now reached a 
point where we leave Egypt and have seen the last of 
that one particular Pharaoh, it is in place to take a 
final review of the questions — Who was this Pharaoh ? 
Can he be identified in the annals of Egyptian antiqui- 
ties? Have any points of chronological contact be- 
tween the records of Egypt and the records of Moses 
been fixed reliably so that the one system can be laid 
alongside of the other and positive correspondence be 
made out ? 

Comparing the Hebrew records with Egyptian monu- 
ments and history, the following points of coincidence 
may be regarded as established. 

1. That (as already observed) the kingdom of Egypt 
was thoroughly organized, was powerful, and had, ap- 
parently, the ripeness of age, in the times of Joseph 
and of Moses. In all these respects it was far in ad- 
vance of the adjacent populations of Northern Africa 
and of South-western Asia. 

2. That the state of the arts, the attainments of the 
learned in science, the usages of the people, the reign 
of law and of social order, indicated a state of civiliza- 



HEBREW AND EGYPTIAN RECORDS COMPARED. 217 

tion much in advance of any thing else known in 
that age. 

3. That all the minute references in sacred history 
to the common life of the people, to their occupations, 
to their skill in the arts, to the productions of the 
country, to their political relations with outside powers, 
are abundantly verified in the numerous monuments 
and authorities which testify what the Egypt of that 
age really was. The reference to many of these points 
in the history of the ten plagues admits of most ample 
verification from the ancient Egyptian authorities. 

4. Particularly we find in Egyptian history the means 
of explaining how a new king might arise who " knew 
not Joseph (change of dynasty being a chronic infirm- 
ity) ; and how the monarch of an empire so magnifi- 
cant, wielding a sway so despotic, might be tempted to 
defy Jehovah and proudly scorn to obey his command 
to " let the people go." 

5. Yet again as to the sort of labor exacted unmerci- 
fully of the Hebrew people the evidence from Egyptian 
antiquities is fully corroborative. " They built for Pha- 
raoh treasure cities, Pithom and Rameses," and were 
put to the severest toil in making brick ; in the erec- 
tion of buildings, including the transportation of the 
heaviest materials; and to "all manner of service in 

the field" (Ex. 1: 11, 14). These treasure cities are 

identified with a high degree of certainty ; and proxi- 
mately some of the very kings by whom this service 
was exacted. Mons. Chabas * thinks he has found the 
Hebrews under name in official Egyptian records. He 
argues well that it must be in vain to look in the pub- 
lic monuments [e. g. in their temples] for any thing 
disastrous to the king or to his people — those monuments 
being consecrated to the triumphs and glories of the 
kingdom — official bulletins for this very purpose. This 
consideration rules out the ten plagues ; the escape of 
the Hebrews; the overthrow of the Egyptians in the 
Red Sea. Events so disreputable and disastrous to 
Egypt need not be looked for on her sacred monuments. 
But the records on papyrus, consisting of both offi- 
cial and private correspondence, military reports, 
surveys of public works, financial accounts, etc., may 
furnish their name. The Hebrews were an important 

*See Bibliotheca Sacra, Oct., 1863, p. 881. 



218 HEBREW AND EGYPTIAN RECORDS COMPARED. 

colony, held forcibly upon the soil of Egypt, employed 
largely upon her public works. Consequently some 
notice of them may be reasonably looked for in the 
class of documents pertaining to the business of the 

realm. Mons. Chabas maintains very sensibly that 

we should look for this people under the name "He- 
brews;" not "children of Israel" — this being rather a 
religious than an ethnic designation ; not "Israelites" — 
this name not having then come into use ; not Jews, 
this name being first used many centuries later. 

Three documents have been recently discovered which 
speak of a foreign race under the hieroglyphic name 
"Aperiu." On principles of comparative philology, 
Mons. Chabas makes this word the equivalent of Hebrew. 

In the first document the scribe Kanisar reports 

to his superior: "I have obeyed the command which 
my master gave me to provide subsistence for the soldiers 
and also for the Aperiu who carry stone for the great 
Bekhen of King Rameses. I have given them rations 
every month according to the excellent instructions of 
my master." * The second is similar : " I have fur- 
nished rations to the soldiers and also to the Aperiu 
who carry stone for the sun of [the temple of] the sun, 
Rameses Meriamen, to the south of Memphis." 

Furthermore, Egyptian records show that they put 
their prisoners of war to such labors; for their kings 
record on the temples the number of captives they have 
taken to labor upon the temples of their gods. 

Two of these documents on papyri belong to the reign 
of Rameses II, whom Mons. Chabas assumes to be the 
king whose daughter adopted Moses and whose son and 
successor, Mei-en-ptah, experienced the ten plagues and 
fell in the Red Sea. (Bib. Sacra, Oct., 1865, p. 685.) 

6. It is a well-established fact of history that at one 
period — not yet located definitely — Lower Egypt was 
subdued and held by a Shepherd race, called by Josephus, 
" Hyksos," supposed to have come from adjacent provin- 
ces of Arabia or from Pheniciaor both, and to have held 
the country from 350 to 500 years — a Vandal race, sav- 
agely desolating the noble monuments of Egyptian art 
and civilization, and known by the native Egyptians 

* The term " Bekhen " is used for any kind of building — a temple, 
palace, or even a common house. Descriptions of what they built 
correspond to the sacred record, " treasure-cities." 



HEBREW AND EGYPTIAN RECORDS COMPARED. 219 

as " the Scourge." This Shepherd race was ultimately 
driven out by the kings of Upper Egypt (a Theban 
dynasty) — probably before the age of Moses; perhaps 
before Jacob went down into Egypt. It may be consid- 
ered certain that Josephus and others err in confound- 
ing them with the Hebrew people. Geo. Rawlinson 

[in Aids to Faith, p. 293] says — "The period of the 
Shepherd Kings is estimated variously as continuing 
500, 600, 900, and even 2,000 years ; that historic monu- 
ments were generally destroyed during their dominion ; 
that no reliable historic records exist older than the be- 
ginning of the eighteenth dynasty which expelled the 
Shepherd Kings; and that previously to their times, 
' Association ' in Royalty was practiced, two or even 
three kings sitting on the same throne at the same time, 
dividing its labors and its honors between themselves." 
As to the date of this Shepherd rule, the diversity in 
opinion among the best informed students of Egyptian 
antiquity is by no means comforting or assuring. Dr. 
Lepsius and others have placed their invasion of Egypt 
directly after the twelfth dynasty (B. C. 2101), and their 
expulsion about B. C. 1591. In his chronology, Jacob 
went down into Egypt B. C. 1414 ; Moses led the people 
out B. C. 1314 — neither date having the least regard to 

the scripture chronology. Mons. Mariette dates it in 

the eighteenth century B. C, i. e. between B. C. 1700 
and B. C. 1800. With this we might compare the so- 
journ of the Israelites in Egypt from B. C. 2033 to B. C. 
1603 ; or on the chronology of Usher, from B. C. 1706 to 

B. C. 1491. Brugsch dates their incursion B. C. 2115, 

and supposes them to have been Arabs from Arabia 
Petraea. Bunsen's latest recension places their in- 
vasion B. C. 1983; their expulsion, B. C. 1548; and the 
Exodus of the Hebrews B. C. 1320— the last date being 
certainly wide of the truth. The evidence is con- 
clusive that their expulsion preceded the resplendent 
eighteenth dynasty whose kings ruled over all Egypt, 
and among whom was the Pharaoh who " would not let 
the people go." Dr. Thompson argues at considerable 
length that the entire occupation of Lower Egypt by 
the Hyksos must have preceded the residence of the He- 
brews there ; but feels the difficulties of the problem. 
He says — " As yet the terminus a quo remains in obscur- 
ity " [the point at which their occupation begins] ; 



220 HEBREW AND EGYPTIAN RECORDS COMPARED. 

" while the terminus ad quern is beginning to take a fixed 
place in history." The date of their expulsion is mostly- 
relieved of doubt. The war which resulted in their ex- 
pulsion was begun by Seneken-Ra, about the com- 
mencement of the 18th dynasty of Thebes [Upper 
Egypt], and was prosecuted by Ahmes I, otherwise 
called Nebpeh-Ra, in whose fifth year they were finally 
expelled. The reign of Ahmes I is proximately as- 
signed to the 17th century B. C, i. e. from B. C. 1600 to 

B. C. 1700. A curious inscription has recently been 

discovered by Mons. Dumischen, referring to a brilliant 
triumph over the Lybians, achieved by a certain king 
Menephtah — this war being dated nearly 400 years 
after the expulsion of the Hyksos. The scribe appended 
the remark — "One could not have seen the like in the 
time of the kings of Lower Egypt when the country of 
Egypt was held by the "Scourge" and the kings of Upper 

Egypt could not drive them out." This authority 

seems to prove that the Hyksos held only Lower Egypt ; 
that Upper Egypt was under another dynasty, for a 
time unable to expel the Shepherd race, but ultimately 
successful, and subsequently attaining much greater mil- 
itary power ; also that the Hyksos people were accounted 
a savage and barbarous race. 

In conclusion I am constrained to say that the study 
of Egyptian antiquities, though richly remunerative 
and satisfactory in regard to almost every thing else, is 
still very dubious and perplexing in the point of 
definite chronology. The views of the ablest scholars are 
widely conflicting; the original authorities still wait 
for some master mind to put them into system, or what 
is perhaps nearer the truth, for the discovery of com- 
petent data from which a system can be constructed 
which shall harmonize all the authorities in the case. 
We want to know the Pharaoh to whom the Lord sent 
Moses, whose reign synchronizes with the Exodus. 
We find a series of powerful monarchs in the eighteenth 
dynasty and also in the nineteenth ; but which of them 
answers to this particular Pharaoh, it seems yet impos- 
sible to determine with satisfactory certainty. Barne- 
ses II, all agree, w r as a powerful king; built immense 
public works ; reigned at least sixty, perhaps sixty-six 
years; — but some authorities place him in the eighteenth 
and some in the nineteenth dynasty, and the extreme 



HEBREW AND EGYPTIAN RECORDS COMPARED. 221 

difference in the assigned dates for his reign is three 
hundred years. 

The difficulties that invest Egyptian dates and dy- 
nasties seem at present to be aggravated rather than 
relieved by the progress of modern discoveries. Thus 
we find in the Bib. Sacra, Oct. 1867, (pp. 773 and 774) 
four parallel lists of the first three Egyptian dynasties, 
viz: (1.) That of Manetho; (2.) The Turin Papyrus; 
(3.) The Tablet of Sethos ; (4.) The Tablet of Sakharah 
or Memphis. Compared with Manetho, the last three 
are of quite recent discovery. They are somewhat de- 
fective; yet it is not specially difficult to discover a 
striking similarity and in many cases an obvious 
identity in the names given. But the names in 
Manetho's list almost utterly lack even similarity ; 
much more do they refuse to come into identity. The 
authority of the last three must, it seems to me, be de- 
cidedly greater than that of Manetho. The same 

difficulty appears when we compare Manetho's names 
in the later dynasties (e. g. 18th-20th) with names 
constantly coming to light in recently discovered Egyp- 
tian monuments. I know not how this fact affects 
other minds. It can not but lessen my confidence in 
the lists of Manetho. It certainly goes far to lessen 

their practical value. It is somewhat disheartening 

that these chronological difficulties clear up so slowly. 
It still remains to be hoped that light w r ill yet break in 
and that conclusions w r ill be reached in w T hich all im- 
portant authorities w T ill be show r n to concur.* 

It would be a very great acquisition historically if 
we might know what Egypt was doing while the He- 
brews were wandering in the wilderness forty years. 
Various circumstances conspire to favor the opinion 
that during this period her king made a vast military 
crusade upon Palestine and the regions farther north, 
occupying several years and greatly crippling the pow- 
erful tribes [kingdoms so called] then in possession of 
the land of Canaan. Both Josephus and Herodotus 
give accounts of a great military expedition of this 
sort — leaving, however, the main chronological prob- 

* See Burgess on "The Antiquity of Man," pp. 68-84, on the un- 
reliability of Manetho's lists and on the relative value of other au- 
thorities in Egyptian chronologies. 



222 HEBREW AND EGYPTIAN RECORDS COMPARED. 

lem When? to be determined. As to the great power 

of the kings of Canaan, the Lord said to Moses, " I will 
send a hornet before you to drive them out," i. e. to break 
down their power and facilitate the subjection of the 
country before the arms of Joshua. The original word 
translated " hornet" does not suggest the insect now 
commonly known by that name ; but is equivalent to 
scourge, yet not precisely defining of what sort. It is 
supposable that Egypt and her next king after the Ex- 
odus, were more maddened than subdued by the escape 
of Israel and by the humbling disaster at the Red Sea; 
that this great expedition was inspired by the ex- 
pectation of finding the Hebrew people in Canaan and 
of punishing them there ; that God's providence shield- 
ed them with perfect protection in the great Arabian 
desert where no Egyptian host could follow them or 
even subsist; and then with that marvelous wisdom 
which so often turns the wrath of man to his own 
praise, used their prowess in arms to break down the 
military strength of Canaan and prepare that land for 
easy conquest before the arms of Joshua. It seems ob- 
vious that in point of military strength a great change 
had. come over the tribes of Canaan between the visit 
of the spies and the conquest by Israel. Did the Lord 
use the chariots and horsemen of Egypt to produce this 
result? To have done so would be quite in keeping 
with that great law of his operations in this sinning 
world under which he so often turns the wrath of 
wicked men to account most signally and even glori- 
ously to promote the ends of his own kingdom. 

The Manna. 

The divine plan of leading Israel to Canaan by the 
way of the great desert involved the question of subsist- 
ence — bread and water for such a host through so long a 
journey. It was perfectly obvious that the ordinary 
resources of this desert were entirely inadequate, so 
that the alternative was simply, miracle, or starvation. 
In the choice of miracle God had in view not only 
physical subsistence but moral culture — the perpetual 
impression upon the millions of Israel that their cove- 
nant-keeping God was feeding them every day with 
bread immediately from his own hand. 



THE MANNA. 223 

This bread took the name u manna'' from the ques- 
tion asked by the people when they found it upon the 
ground in the morning — What is this? Their Hebrew 
words were — Man-hu; what this? All the ancient 
versions and most ancient authorities concur in de- 
riving the name "manna" from this original question 
as put in Ex. 16: 15. [Our English version has the 
only correct rendering in the margin.] 

The manna fell by night as the dew falls, and it 
would seem, fell with and in the dew so that when the 
dew evaporated under the morning sun, there remained 
this very fine deposit — u a small round thing, as small 
as the hoar frost upon the ground."' "It was like 
coriander seed, white, and the taste of it was like 
wafers made with honey'' (Ex. 16: 13-15, 31). A sub- 
sequent description (Num. 11 : 7-9) adds — " The manna 
was as coriander seed and the color thereof as the color 
of bdellium. And the people went about and gathered 
it. and ground it in mills, or beat it in a mortar, and 
baked it in pans, and made cakes of it ; and the taste of 
it was as the taste of fresh oil. And when the dew fell 
upon the camp in the night, the manna fell upon 
it,'' The gathering, the preparation of it for cook- 
ing, and the cooking itself, cost labor, yet obviously 
none too much for the health and morals of the million. 
The physiological facts to be noticed are that it was 
sufficiently palatable for all practical purposes and had 
the necessary elements for the real bread — the staff of 
life — for a whole nation during forty years of wilderness 
life, with its alternations of marchings and encamp- 
ments ; of labor and of rest. 

The points which evinced the miraculous hand of 
God were — that it came from no known or possible 
source of supply in the kingdom of nature : that it fell 
in the full amount needed for the thousands of Israel; 
fell on each of six mornings but not at all on the sev- 
enth, the Sabbath ; that the average amount on five of 
these mornings was a supply for one day, while on the 
morning next preceding the Sabbath, a double quantity 
fell, being a supply for two days ; that the gathering 
for the first five days of the week could be kept only 
one day, but the double supply of the sixth day re- 
mained sweet and pure for two days ; and moreover, a 
quantity laid up by God's command in the sacred ark 



224 THE MANNA. 

remained unchanged for many generations. Thus won- 
derfully did the Almighty impress his hand upon every 
feature of this bread from heaven !* 

The allusions to manna in the Scriptures take note 
of the fact that " God suffered them to hunger " before he 
sent them this supply (Deut. 8: 3, 16). The record 
(Ex. 16 : 1) states that it was already the fifteenth day 
of the second month since they came out of Egypt 
when the whole congregation murmured for bread and 
seemed to themselves about to perish of hunger in the 
wilderness. One month and a half must have quite 
exhausted the hasty and scanty supplies which they 
brought from Egypt. The marvel is how they could 
have subsisted upon this so long, even though coupled 
with all the supplies possible in that desert. That 
"God suffered them to hunger" is however only in 
harmony with his usual method of dealing with his 
people — subjecting them to a certain pressure of want 
for purposes of moral trial — the object being to test 
their faith in himself; to draw out their soul in prayer 
for help and in trust under darkness and in straits; 
and to make the blessing when given doubly precious. 
What Christian has ever lived long under any circum- 
stances of this earthly life without some discipline 
under this great law of the Christian life — " He suffered 
thee to hunger" and then "fed thee with angels' 
food"? 

Moses (Deut. 8: 16) makes a special point of the 
fact that this bread was such as neither they nor their 
fathers had ever known before. The Psalmist (Ps. 78 : 
24, 25) takes the lofty poetic view of this great gift of 
God : " He commanded the clouds from above and 
opened the doors of heaven and rained down manna 
upon them to eat and gave them of the corn of heaven. 
Man did eat angels' food : he sent them meat to the 

full." Josh. 5 : 12 shows that the manna ceased as 

abruptly as it began, precisely when it was needed no 
longer. The people having arrived in Canaan and sup- 
plies being within reach from the old corn of the land, 
the manna ceased and fell no more. 

An article of commerce known under the name of 

• The passages which treat of it are Ex. 16: 14-36 and Nam. 11 : 
7-9 and Deut. 8 : 3, 16 and Josh. 5 : 12, Ps. 78 : 24, 25 and Wisdom 
16 : 20, 21. 



WATER SUPPLIED BY MIRACLE. 225 

"manna," produced in the Arabian desert and in 
other Oriental regions, has scarcely any points in com- 
mon with the manna of Scripture save the name. It 
exudes from shrubs; does not fall from the lower 
heavens in and with the dew ; it is obtained at the 
utmost only about four months of the year; is most 
abundant in wet seasons— fails in the dry; is somewhat 
useful as a condiment and a medicine, but can never 
take the place of bread; and never has been known in 
such quantities as would supply bread for the hosts of 
Israel. 

How long the pot of manna was preserved in the ark 
of the covenant can not be known definitely. We have 
the fact that the Lord directed its preservation there 
(Ex. 16: 32-34); and the further fact that when the 
ark was placed in the new temple of Solomon there 
was nothing in it save the two tables of stone (1 Kings 
8 : 9). It was doubtless kept long enough to subserve 
all the valuable purposes of a memorial to the gene- 
rations of Israel. It has been embalmed in the Chris- 
tian consciousness of the Christian age by its symbolical 
use in the teachings of our Lord in which it represents 
his flesh which he gave for the life of the world — the 
far more real bread of life from heaven (John 6 : 31-35, 
47-58). 

Water Supplied by Miracle. 

The subsistence of the Israelites during forty years 
in the desert of Arabia involved not only a supply of 
bread but of water also. On two distinct occasions — the 
first at Rephidim, close to Horeb, during the last half 
of the second month from Egypt; and the second at 
Kadesh, in the northern border of the great desert, 
and during the first month of the fortieth year from 
Egypt,* water was supplied them by miracle. 

So great a multitude of people, including their ani- 
mals, must have required a large supply of water. 

* The precise date of the scenes at Kadesh (Num. 20) may be in- 
ferred from the death of Aaron which followed shortlv after (Nam. 
20: 23-29), and is definitely dated (Nam. 33: 38), viz. on the first 
day of the fifth month in the fortieth year from Egypt. The M first 
month" therefore, spoken of Num. 20 : 1 must have been that of the 
fortieth year. 



226 WATER SUPPLIED BY MIRACLE. 

Nothing therefore is more probable than that the sup- 
ply should often be short, and sometimes utterly fail. 
At Rephidim the people most unreasonably chode with 
Moses as if he alone was responsible for bringing them 
out of Egypt and for the lack of water, and as if their 
sufferings were so great as altogether to eclipse all the 
blessings of that great deliverance. Moses had no help 
but in the Lord his God. In answer to prayer the 
Lord provided for a miracle, to be well attested by the 
presence of a body of the elders of the people. " Take 
them with thee," saith the Lord, " and take also thy 
rod wherewith thou smitest the river" (the Nile) "and 
go. I will stand before thee there upon the rock in 
Horeb and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall 

come water out of it that the people may drink." 

The names given were significant — "Massah" of their 
tempting the Lord by their unbelief; Meribah, of their 
chiding and strife as to Moses. 

The scenes at Kadesh (Num. 20) were almost forty 
years subsequent, and consequently involved another 
generation. The spirit of their complaint was- quite 
the same however — chiding Moses most unreasonably, 
petulantly wishing they had died before the Lord as so 
many of their brethren who had fallen under God's 
judgments in the wilderness since the unbelieving re- 
port of the spies and the consequent wrath of God upon 
the people. Sadly we must note here that this un- 
reasonable and even cruel reflection upon Moses stirred 
his indignation, excited him unduly, and found expres- 
sion in ill-advised words from his lips. The Lord had 
told him to take Aaron his brother, to gather the people 
together before the rock, and then speak to the rock be- 
fore their eyes and it should give forth water. When 
the eventful moment came, Moses, instead of saying — 
Ye have sinned against the Lord your God, yet in his 
mercy he will give you rivers of water from this rock 
upon the word of command from his servant — said as in 
the record — "Hear now, ye rebels, must we fetch you 
water out of this rock "? In circumstances where man 
should be nothing and God all in all — man only a con- 
sciously unworthy instrument, and God the Supreme 
and ever to be honored Power, it was one of the sad in- 
firmities of the best of men to put himself so promi- 
nently forward and thrust the Great God so ungrate- 



WATER SUPPLIED BY MIRACLE. 227 

fully into the back-ground. Then, moved by the same 
excited passion, instead of speaking to the rock, he 
smote it with his rod, not once only but twice. Yet 
the Lord did not rebuke him with failure, but despite 
of his bad spirit, gave forth water abundantly. The 
rebuke upon both Moses and Aaron came shortly after 
in the form of an absolute prohibition upon their en- 
tering the land of promise. They had so dishonored 
the Lord in this case at Kadesh that he must needs ex- 
press his disapprobation by denying to both of them 
the long-desired consummation of entering the goodly 
land. — —If the Lord's rebuke of Moses seem severe, let 
it be considered that his sin was very great because he 
had been admitted into so near communion with God — 
such communion as had never been granted to any 
other man. If the guilt of sin be as the light sinned 
against, we are not likely to overestimate the guilt of 
his. The Lord speaks of it as rebellion (Num. 27 : 14). 
And manifestly his sin was so public as well as so 
flagrant that it became vital to the honor of God's name 
and government to rebuke it unmistakably. 

The exclusion from Canaan fell sorely upon the heart 
of Moses. He prayed earnestly that God would reverse 
this decree, but in vain. The Lord shut off all hope, 
saying, "Let it suffice thee; speak no more unto me of 
this matter" (Deut. 3 : 23-27). Sorrowful are the words 
of Moses: "I must die in this land; I must not go over 
Jordan" (Deut. 4: 21). 

The question arises naturally: Were these two 
cases — at Rephidim and at Kadesh — the only supplies 
by miracle during those forty years? One of them oc- 
curred during the first year of the forty ; the other, dur- 
ing the last : was the whole intervening period barren 
of all miraculous supply? Or were these two cases put 
on record rather as specimens than as exhaustive his- 
tory? Yet another question comes up: How long 

did the supply in each of these two cases continue ? 
Rephidim was adjacent to Sinai, and the hosts of Israel 
remained before and near that mountain many days. 
Did the supply from the Rephidim rock hold good dur- 
ing this entire period? Did it follow them along their 
journey in the wilderness still further ? 

To these questions the first answer is — that the his- 
tory is silent as to the duration of the supply in either 



228 WATER SUPPLIED BY MIRACLE. 

case. Moses might have told us definitely, but he has 

not. Beyond this it only remains to take note of the 

allusions to this supply, made elsewhere in the Scrip- 
tures, and to suggest the probabilities of the case. 

The writer of Ps. 78 sings: "He clave the rock in the 
wilderness and gave them drink as out of the great 
depths. He brought streams also out of the rock and 
caused waters to run down like rivers" (vs. 15, 16). 
In Ps. 114: 8. we read— •" Who turned the rock into a 
standing water; the flint, into a fountain of water." 
These words imply a great abundance for the time and 
seem to assume an ample supply so long as the hosts of 
Israel remained in those places. They do not necessa- 
rily imply that the waters followed them as a river in 
their journey onward from Rephidim or from Kadesh. 
The allusions in Isa. 43 : 19, 20, and 48 : 21 are de- 
cisive as to the temporary supply but indefinite as to 

its duration. The words of Paul (1 Cor. 10 : 4) should 

be noted. " Our fathers all drank the same spiritual 
drink (for they drank of that spiritual Rock that fol- 
lowed them and that Rock was Christ"). In this 

passage, drinking of the Rock can be nothing else than 
drinking of the waters that issued from the rock. The 
only question of importance exegetically is — whether 
the words "followed them" refer to the waters or to the 
presence of Christ as in the pillar of cloud and of fire. 
The former seems the more obvious and natural refer- 
ence, and, in so far, favors the view that these waters, 
furnished miraculously, did follow them to some extent 
on their journey — perhaps in the way of fresh supplies 
provided for them in a similar manner. It can not be 
doubted that the hosts of Israel had water through all 
their journeyings ; they could not have subsisted long 
without it. The natural supply must have been vastly 
greater in that age than in this if it sufficed for this 
great host at all other points of their journey save at 
Rephidim and at Kadesh. The fact of a constant sup- 
ply of bread by miracle favors the assumption of water 
miraculously provided whenever the supply from nat- 
ural sources failed to meet their necessities. This is 
perhaps the utmost we can say in the way of proba- 
bilities. 



BATTLE WITH AMALEK. 229 



The Battle With Amalek. 

While Israel was on the march near Rephidiin, the 
Amalekites fell savagely upon their rear in a dastardly, 
unprovoked assault, described by Moses (Deut. 25 : 17, 
18) : "Remember what Amalek did to thee by the way 
when ye were come forth out of Egypt; how he met 
thee by the way and smote the hindmost of thee, even 
all that were feeble behind thee when thou was faint 
and weary; and he feared not God." The day follow- 
ing, Moses summoned Joshua to choose men for war 
and go out against Amalek, proposing for himself to 
take his stand upon a hill adjacent with the rod of God 
in his hand. His uplifted hand and rod became the 
symbol or rather the visible manifestation of prayer. 
While held up aloft, Israel prevailed; let down, 
Amalek prevailed. To achieve victory despite of the 
weariness of Moses, a stone was placed for him to sit 
upon ; then Aaron and Hur on either side held up his 
hands until the going down of the sun. Thus victory 
was achieved; Amalek was defeated, and what is spec- 
ially to be noted, a signal illustration was afforded of 
the power of prayer and a sublime testimony placed on 
record before all Israel that in God they were mighty 
against their foes and could have nothing to fear. So 
important were these great moral lessons that the Lord 
directed Moses to " write this for a memorial in the 
book" [not merely a book] — the well-known public 
record in which the wonderful works of God for Israel 

were to be permanently preserved. Another reason 

for the record was that Amalek was doomed for this 
outrage, and the future kings and warriors of Israel re- 
ceived from time to time their divine commission to 
execute this sentence of extermination. (See Deut. 25 : 
19, and 1 Sam. 15, etc., etc.) 

There are some differences of opinion as to the history 
and geographical location of these Amalekites. The 
name "Amalek n appears (Gen. 36 : 12) as the grandson 
of Esau ; whence some have found the origin, genealog- 
ically, of this people there; but they appear much 

earlier (Gen. 14 : 7). As to their home geographically, 

their nomadic habits require a somewhat wide range of 
territory within which they may be found. The pas- 



230 AMALEK. 

sages 1 Sam. 15 : 7, and 27 : 8, locate them in the dis- 
trict lying between the Philistines and Egypt, along 
the eastern shore of the Mediterranean in Arabia 
Petrea. We find them repeatedly associated with the 
Midianites, Moabites, and Ammonites in raids upon the 
children of Israel during the time of the Judges and on- 
ward to the reign of David (Judg. 3 : 12, 13, and 6 : 3, 
and 1 Sam. 30 : 1). They come to view in the visions 
of Balaam (Num. 24 : 20), spoken of there as " the first 
of the nations" — a phrase which can scarcely refer to 
their high antiquity (though this construction is 
barely possible) ; but more probably it refers to the fact 
that they were the first to make war upon Israel after 
the latter assumed her distinctly national character. 
So understood, the description of Amalek looked histor- 
ically back to the facts before us Ex. 17. Balaam fore- 
saw their early destruction: — their case being in this 
respect solemnly admonitory to the king of Moab. 

Let us not pass this historic fragment without a 
passing allusion to its admirable fitness as the opening 
scene in Israel's relation to hostile foreign powers. 
She had and was destined to have national enemies. 
It was clearly in the policy of the Lord her God that 
she should fight these enemies with arms in deadly 
combat. Hence it was vital that she should be taught 
in the outset where her strength for victory actually 
lay. This onslaught of Amalek upon her rear and the 
ensuing battle, terminating in victory through prayer 
without ceasing — the uplifted arms of their Moses sus- 
tained till the sun set upon the victorious arms of 
Joshua — became their standard lesson — the first and 
the permanent example to show them the fountain of 
their strength — the ground of assured victory while 
they lived in obedience to God and trusted his arm 

alone. It scarcely need be said that all the spiritual 

conflicts of God's people with sin and Satan fall under 
the same general law — victory through prayer sus- 
tained and unfaltering — victory in the strength of 
Israel's God alone. 

Jethro. 

In Ex. 18, Moses narrates a visit from his father-in- 
law who brought to him his wife and children, left in 



AMALEK. 231 

his care ever since the scenes of which we read Ex. 4 : 
18-26. Jethro is before us here as both a good and a 
wise man — good in that his heart is shown to be with 
God and with God's people, " rejoicing for all the good- 
ness which the Lord had done to Israel whom he had 
delivered out of the hand of the Egyptians " (18 : 9) ; 
and wise in that he saw at a glance that the burdens 
then borne by Moses in the administration of justice 
among the people would soon break him down ; and in 
his admirable suggestions of a better method which from 
that day became established among the Hebrew people. 
For both reasons such a visit deserved a permanent 
record. It refreshes us to think of that good man who 
had known Moses forty years as his worthy son-in-law, 
yet moving only in the humble sphere of a shepherd's 
wilderness life ; but now meeting him God's recognized 
Leader of the thousands of Israel and hearing from his 
lips the wonders God had wrought on Egypt and on 
Pharaoh ; the deliverance from national bondage ; the 
passage of the Red Sea and the entrance upon a wilder- 
ness march underneath the cloudy pillar ; subsisting on 
the "corn of heaven" and on rivers of water from the 
rock of Rephidim; and withal having just then 
achieved their first victory over the first foreign power 
that dared assail them : — all this recital from the lips 
of such a son must have moved the aged father's heart 
with unwonted emotions. We are not surprised that 
he should exclaim: "Blessed be the Lord" [your na- 
tion's own Jefiovah] " who hath delivered you out of 
the hand of the Egyptians and out of the hand of Pha- 
raoh. Now I know that the Lord is greater than all 
gods, for in the thing wherein they dealt proudly, he 

was above them " (18 : 10, 11). Then, being a priest, 

[" priest of Midian " Ex. 2 : 16 and 18 : 1], he proceeded 
to offer sacrifices in the manner which had come down 
traditionally from the earliest fathers. "He took a 
burnt offering and sacrifices for God ; and Aaron came 
and all the elders of Israel to eat bread with Moses' 
father-in-law before God" (v. 12). The term "burnt 
offering n is usually applied to a sacrifice which is burnt 
entire upon the altar. The phrase " sacrifice for God," 
refers here to a peace-offering upon portions of which 
the worshipers partook in the manner of a religious 

11 



232 sinai. 

feast — an act at once religious toward God and social 
toward man. 

The next day Moses resumed his accustomed routine 
of labor, sitting for the administration of justice to the 
people from morning till evening. The spirit which 
we see in Moses where he appears first in active life 
(Ex. 2 : 11-13) would naturally put him to this service. 
His prestige as the recognized Leader of Israel under 
God would turn the eyes of all the people to him as their 
Judge. Hence naturally this overwhelming burden, 
from which relief came through the wise suggestion of 
Jethro. This was that a gradation of subordinate courts 
be instituted so that cases of lesser magnitude and diffi- 
culty might be administered by others, and only the 
more difficult be brought before Moses. The guiding 
principle in the classification was at first both tribal 
and numerical — following their division into tribes and 
their numbers. After their location in Ganaan the nu- 
merical element gave place to the geographical. Judges 
had their province and their responsibility limited, 
not by thousands and hundreds directly but by cities 
and localities. With this modification the system passed 

into established usage among the Hebrews. In a 

parallel passage (Deut. 1 : 9-18) Moses recites the same 
transaction, omitting all allusion to his father-in-law, 
and giving prominence to the qualities requisite in 
judges, and to the principles of justice and righteous- 
ness by which they were to be governed. At the close 

of this brief interview Jethro returned to his home and 
people. His son Hobab, brother-in-law of Moses, appears 
in the history somewhat later (Num. 10: 29-32), and 
seems to have consented to act as guide to Moses and 
Israel in their march from Sinai to Kadesh, and not 
improbably until they reached the Jordan. The home 
of the family had been on^the East and South of Horeb. 
In the period of the Judges and onward they are in the 
Northern border of the great Arabian desert. (See 
Judg. 1 : 16 and 4 : 11 and 1 Sam. 15 : 6). 

The Scenes at Sinai. 

The National Covenant and the Giving of the Law. 

Events of most vital bearing upon the national life 
of the Hebrew people are now before us. No longer one 



THE NATIONAL COVENANT. 233 

family as in Abraham and Isaac and Jacob ; no longer 
a mere tribe, clustering several families under one or 
more patriarchs, but a group of many tribes, enlarging 
fast toward the proportions of a great nation ; — and 
what is more, a people no longer under the emasculating 
incubus of bondage, but emancipated, and free to rise 
and assume the duties of self-government with all its 
possibilities of growth and improvement, personal and 
national — this great people, were at this point sum- 
moned of God to enter into solemn national covenant 
with himself. In its spirit and significance this cove- 
nant differed in no essential point from that which God 
made with Abraham more than six hundred years before. 
In that earlier covenant Abraham spake for himself, 
and so far as it was naturally possible, for his posterity 
as well ; and God on his part promised to be a God not 
to him only but to his seed after him ; yet w T hen this 
seed of Abraham became a great people, there was 
special fitness in summoning them to renew this cove- 
nant for themselves. Precisely this was done before Sinai. 
The Lord reminded them most appropriately of what 
he had so recently done for them. " Ye have seen what 
I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagle's 
wings and brought you unto myself." It was as if he 
had lifted them up from earth toward heaven and borne 
them forth and out from their national bondage — as the 
eagle might take up her young and bear them aloft be- 
yond the reach of whatsoever hostile power were tied 
down upon the earth's surface. God had done this for 
the definite purpose of bringing them to himself. "Now, 
therefore, (he proceeds) if ye will obey my voice indeed 
and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar 
treasure to me above all people, for all the earth is 
mine ; and ye shall be to me a kingdom of priests and 
a holy nation " (Ex. 19 : 4-6). In this divine proposal 
the central word, translated here " peculiar treasure," 
appears in Ps. 135 : 4 translated in the same way ; but 
in Deut. 7: 6 with a different translation — "A special 
people unto himself, above all people that are upon the 
face of the earth." The sense is — a special property — 
a people by the choice of God and by their own volun- 
tary consecration, made peculiarly his own. Moses in 
Deuteronomy (as above) labors to impress upon the 
people the thought and purpose of God in this covenant 



234 SINAI. 

relation : The Lord did not set his love upon you nor 
choose you because ye were more in number than any 
[other] people; for ye were the fewest of all people; 
but because the Lord loved you and because he would 
keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers, 
hath the Lord brought you out with a mighty hand 
and hath redeemed you out of the house of bondmen 
from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt." Of kin- 
dred significance are the other phrases used to express 
their new proposed relation to God — " A kingdom of 
priests and a holy nation." This strong language — " a 
kingdom of priests " — gives us the thought of a whole 
people — every man in all the nation, personally conse- 
crated to God, as if the nation were made up of priests 
and of such only. God would have them understand 
that the holiness he required of them was not the pro- 
fessional service of a chosen few, but the free-will offer- 
ing of every man's own heart and life. The whole 
people — every individual man — was summoned to come 
into this national covenant. Would they come ? 

Moses called for the elders — who acted as the repre- 
sentatives of the whole people and " laid before their 
faces all these words from the Lord." At once all the 
people answered together and said — " All that the Lord 

hath spoken we will do." Let us hope that a fair 

proportion, including at least many of the representa- 
tive men of the nation, were thoroughly sincere in 
this profession. It would be grateful to our feelings to 
believe that they all both understood and meant what 
they said. But, alas ! subsequent developments forbid 
this belief. It was however the formal consent of the 
nation. As a whole people they gave their voice to 
this definite proposal from the Lord their God — that 
he would be their God and that they would be his 
people. 

The next thing in order, is the giving of the law. A 
people who propose to be the Lord's and to obey his 
voice, should be made acquainted with his will in the 
form of law. They must be informed what he would 
have them do. Rules of heart and life, precepts defin- 
ing the reverent homage and worship due to God, and 
the acts required or forbidden as toward their fellow- 
men should be made unmistakably plain. Prepara- 



THE GIVING OF THE LAW. 235 

tions are accordingly made for the formal and solemn 
promulgation of this great moral law. It is noticeable 
that in these preparations nothing seems to be omitted 
that might conduce to a deep and solemn impression. 
The people are specially enjoined to sanctify them- 
selves, and two full days are set apart for this purpose. 
They were commanded to " wash their clothes" — signifi- 
cant of the personal purity of heart which God re- 
quired. Then the surroundings were of the most 

imposing and impressive character. The whole people 
were gathered in an open plain which lay at the foot 
of Sinai. The most stringent precautions forbade all 
curious, irreverent approach. Not a man or beast 
might touch the mountain on pain of death. Definite 
bounds were set for the people over which no one 
might pass. There before them full in view stood the 
awful mount — rugged, grand, cleft with fissures, broken 
with deep ravines, towering in sublime height and all 
enwrapped in thick clouds out of which lightnings 
flashed — the whole mountain rocking under the foot- 
steps of the Almighty and reverberating with his aw- 
ful thunder, and the voice of trumpet exceeding loud 
so that all the people in the camp trembled. The 
written description of this scene gives us a sense of its 
ineffable grandeur and sublimity. " Mount Sinai was 
altogether on a smoke because the Lord descended upon 
it in fire ; and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke 
of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly. 
When the voice of the trumpet sounded long and waxed 
louder and louder, Moses spake and the God answered 

him by a voice." Essentially the same descriptive 

points are repeated after the record of the law as pro- 
mulged from Sinai (Ex.20: 18-21).^ " All the people 
saw the thunderings and the lightnings and the noise 
of the trumpet and the mountain smoking ; and when 
the people saw it, they removed and stood afar off*, and 
said to Moses : Speak thou with us and we will hear ; 
but let not God speak with us lest we die." See also 
the renewed mention of this scene in Deut. 4 : 10-12.* 



* Bearing in mind that the Israelites had lived in the valley of 
the Nile, all unused to mountain scenery, we may readily under- 
stand how these scenes around the base of Sinai must have im- 
pressed them. It is quite in place here to bring before our mind 



236 sinai. 

The Moral Law as given from Sinai. 

Passing from the natural surroundings and scenes of 
Sinai to the law itself, let it be observed carefully that 
this law of ten commandments (Ex. 20 : 1-17 and Deut. 
5 : 6-21) is to be somewhat broadly distinguished from 
the other " statutes and judgments/' whether civil or 

the physical features of this wonderful pile of rocks and cliffs. A 
modern writer supplies the following sketch : 

" The entire Sinaitic group presents the most impressive indica- 
tions of the terrible convulsions by which its labyrinth of mountain 
heights has been rent and torn since its first upheaval. From the 
summit of Mt. Serbal, as from a watchtower in high heaven, one 
looks down upon a perfect sea of mountain ridges, often precipitous, 
always intensely steep, and culminating in a sharp edge at the 
height of two, three, or four thousand feet from their base. The 
entire line of these mountains is seen to have been rent transversely 
by clefts from the base to the summit, filled with injections of 
basaltic rocks, striping the mountain on every side with black bands. 
The whole assemblage is a perfect ganglion of ridges thrown up in 
wild confusion with its strata dislocated, disjointed, dipping in all 
directions and at every angle from horizontal to perpendicular. 
The mountains of Sinai form no system, no regular ranges, like the 
Alps, the Appenines, the Pyrenees, or the mountains of America." 
(Bib, Sac. April 1867, p. 253). \ 

Dr. E. Robinson gives his impressions from personal inspec- 
tion — thus : " Here the interior and loftier peaks of the great circle 
of Sinai began to open upon us — black, rugged, desolate summits ; 
and as we advanced, the dark and frowning front of Sinai itself (the 
present Horeb of the monks) began to appear. The scenery re- 
minded me strongly of the mountains around the Mer de Glace in 

Switzerland. I had never seen a spot more wild and desolate. 

As we advanced the valley still opened wider and wider, shut in on 
each side by lofty granite ridges with rugged, shattered peaks a 
thousand feet high, while the face of Horeb rose directly before us. 
Both my companion and myself involuntarily exclaimed : '* Here 
is room enough for a large encampment " ! Reaching the top of 
the ascent, a fine broad plain lay before us, sloping down gently 
toward the S. S. E., inclosed by rugged and venerable mountains of 
dark granite, stern, naked, splintered peaks and ridges, of indescrib- 
able grandeur; and terminated at the distance of more than a mile 
by the bold and awful front of Horeb, rising perpendicularly in 
frowning majesty from twelve to fifteen hundred feet high. It was 
a scene of solemn grandeur, and the associations which at the mo- 
ment rushed upon our minds, were almost overwhelming. " [Rob- 
inson's Researches Vol. I. p. 130, 131.] This plain stretching out 

from the foot of this precipitous mount, is supposed to have been 
the identical place where the people were gathered to see the 
mountain all aflame — to hear the sound of trumpet long and loud, 
and to listen to the voice of God proclaiming the words of his law. 



THE LAW OF TEN COMMANDMENTS. 237 

religious, which the Lord gave to Israel by the hand of 
Moses ; — this distinction being apparent in the follow- 
ing points and for the reasons which they suggest : 

1. It was proclaimed by God himself in a most pub- 
lic and solemn manner in the hearing not of Moses 
alone, but of the elders of the people at least, if not of 
the people en masse, assembled before and around the 
glorious mount. 

2. It was given under circumstances of most ap- 
palling majesty and sublimity — the mountain being 
enveloped with clouds and thick darkness, yet at some 
moments all ablaze with the lightning's flash and rock- 
ing beneath Jehovah's feet. 

3. It was written by the finger of God on two tables 
of stone (Deut 5: 22). 

4. It differed from any and all other laws given to Is- 
rael in that it was comprehensive and general rather 
than specific and particular. 

5. It was complete, being one finished whole to which 
nothing was to be added — from which nothing was ever 
taken away. ("And he added no more " Deut 5 : 22. 
See also Mat. 5: 18). The other statutes, as we shall 
see, were subjected to future modification. 

6. The law of the ten commandments was honored by 
Jesus Christ as embodying the substance of the law of 
God enjoined upon man. With a master's hand he 
grasped and brought out its two great principles, under- 
lying all the precepts : Love supreme to God : love equal 
and unselfish toward fellow-men. "Thou shalt love the 
Lord with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself." 
(Mat. 22 : 36-40, and 19: 18, 19 and Mk. 12: 28-34). 

7. It can scarcely be doubted that Jesus had his eye 
specially if not exclusively on this law (Mat. 5 : 18) as 
one never to be repealed — from which not one jot or tittle 
should ever pass away. 

To this great moral law of ten commandments we 
now give special attention and note — That its intro- 
duction (Ex. 20 : 2), " I am the Lord thy God which 
have brought thee out of the land of Egypt — out of the 
house of bondage" — is special — not general and uni- 
versal; is adapted to the circumstances of Israel, and 
gives a special reason why they should honor this law 
as coming from the God of their national covenant, the 
Redeemer and Savior of their nation. On the one hand 



238 sinai. 

this special reason why Israel should render supreme 
homage to Jehovah as their Deliverer from Egyptian 
bondage neither applies specifically to all mankind, 
nor does it imply that this law is not binding on other 
people than Israel. It was pertinent that as given 
originally to them it should be preceded and introduced 
by this special consideration, so pertinent to their case. 
Yet it should be thoughtfully considered — God might 
have said most truly to every child of his great human 
family — I am He who gave thee thy being and every 
good ; and therefore I claim thy supreme love and hom- 
age. 1 see no reason to question that this clause was 

put on the two tables of stone— its special introduction 
as given to the children of Israel. 

I. In the first precept, the words "before me" are 
construed variously. The most usual and obvious 
translation of the Hebrew words is — before my face. 
In some connections the preposition might mean upon 
or above. " My face " is thought by some to be merely 
equivalent to myself Keil translates — " literally beyond 
me, or in addition to me, equivalent to except me, or by 
the side of me." He rejects the construction, "before 
me" (in my presence) as incorrect, and also condemns 
against me — in opposition to me. Fuerst has it " above 
i. e. except me." Murphy says — " before me " is literally 
" upon my face." It supposes those other gods to be set 
up before the true God as antagonists in the eye of God 
and as casting a shade over his eternal being and in- 
communicable glory in the eye of worshipers." 

The two constructions — beyond me and above me — are 
open to the objection that they seem tacitly to admit 
other gods provided they are inferior and that God is 
supreme. I prefer as the more obvious and natural 
construction— before my face. Thus the precept forbids 
homage to any other god in the presence of the supreme 
and omniscient Jehovah ; and by consequence, forbids 
divine honor to any other being or thing whatsoever. 
"Thou shalt have no other gods before my face" seems 
to imply that the least acknowledgment of other gods 
is in its very nature an insult to Jehovah, as if it thrust 
those gods into his very face — held them up before his 
eye as more worthy of homage than he. Moreover, as 
no possible worship of other gods can escape his eye, or 
be otherwise than thrust up before his face, the prohi- 



THE LAW OF TEN COMMANDMENTS. 239 

bition necessarily shuts off all such worship. You may 
never worship other gods than the One Supreme Being, 
for it is simply impossible that any such worship can 
elude his eye, and you must not put it before his face. 

II. The second command prohibits the making and 
worshiping of images designed to represent idol gods — 
imaginary powers, supposed to have more or less con- 
trol over human welfare. It equally prohibits images 
designed to represent the true God. All such sensuous 
conceptions of God are necessarily debasing. They rest 
on false views of God ; tend to fearful and fatal degen- 
eracy; and must therefore be forbidden under most 
stringent penalties. The whole history of our race wit- 
nesses to the infinite mischief wrought by such sensu- 
ous conceptions of God, as well as by the notion of sub- 
ordinate powers, lower than the one supreme yet more 
than human. This has been one of Satan's devices to 
rule God out of his universe and transfer to other ob- 
jects the worship due to God alone. 

This prohibition as it stands here is not enforced by 
specific penalties, but in a way far more impressive it 
bears us back to the very heart of God, revealing his 
holy jealousy of any rival to his throne who would wrest 
and steal away from him the supreme love and homage 
of his creatures, and give it to supposed gods that are 
no Gods at all. " For I am a jealous God, visiting the 
iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third 

and fourth generation of them that hate me." By 

the very law of the family relation, the great sins of the 
father send their curse down upon his children. He 
makes them heirs to an inheritance of shame and sor- 
row. He entails calamity upon his offspring. Godless 
and idolatrous himself, he makes his family also godless 
and idolatrous. The influence of his sin will naturally 
and almost inevitably blight the morals and the souls 
of his children after him, and of his children's children. 
Let this fact throw its shield like a wall of fire around 
him and his family, so that, if not for his own sake, at 
least for the sake of his unborn offspring, he will most 
sacredly obey this command and abstain from the least 
infringement of it in spirit or in letter. 

"Visiting iniquity" and "showing mercy" are set 
over against each other — the penal visitations of judg- 
ment for this sin warning men against it; and the great 



240 THE LAW OF TEN COMMANDMENTS, 

promises of mercy to the obedient alluring them to its 
most diligent observance. Judgment is God's strange 
work, while mercy is his delight. Therefore we have 
here the forceful antithesis — the visiting of the iniqui- 
ties of fathers upon children to the third and fourth gen- 
eration, but the showing of mercy unto thousands of 
generations of them that love and obey. To a Hebrew 
mind this last clause of the second command would 
naturally suggest God's mercies to Abraham, the well- 
known friend of God, upon whose posterity God was 
shedding forth his blessings to thousands of generations. 
So richly does the loving God reward his dutiful and 
trustful children ! So much more grateful to his heart 
it is to bless even to the thousandth generation than to 
visit iniquity even so far as to the third and fourth ! 

It should be carefully noted that the visiting of the 
iniquities of fathers upon sons falls only upon those who 
hate him. If sons in any future generation turn from 
their sinning to the love of God, his merciful loving- 
kindness to them is sure. The curse visits only those 
who persist in the sin of their fathers despite of all the 
warning judgments that should admonish them to fear 
Godv (See Ezek. 18). This injunction against image- 
making and worship would naturally suggest to the men 
of Israel the idolatrous Egyptians. Their early fathers 
received from Noah the knowledge of the one only true 
God. But they did not love this knowledge, nor the 
God whom it revealed ; therefore, not liking to retain 
these views of the pure and holy God, they chose to think 
of him as being like some of his works and began to 
worship such imaginary gods ; or they put in his place 
some lower beings or powers as objects of worship. 
Hence the terrible judgments which the children of 
Israel had seen falling upon Egypt and her idols. 

"Upon those that love me" is delightfully suggestive 
of the great truth that the essence of all acceptable wor- 
ship is love. God looks complacently on his human 
children when they delight in his glory, love his char- 
acter, rejoice in his blessedness, and make it the best 
joy of their souls to please him by doing all his will. 
Such love legitimately flows out in reverent worship 
and adoring homage. Over against this the worship of 
idols in place of God is congenial only to the souls that 
hate God. This command assumes that those who wor- 



THE LAW OF TEN COMMANDMENTS. 241 

ship other gods really hate the one Supreme Jehovah. 
Therefore it is that his jealousy burns against them. 
They withhold from him the love and the homage of 
their hearts. 

III. In the third command the exegetical question is 
whether it refers primarily and properly to perjury, or 
to profanity, i. e. whether the Hebrew word for "in 
vain" * is precisely falsehood, or emptiness, a nothing, 
a thing of no worth. The current of critical opinion 
(Gesenius, Fuerst, etc.) goes for the former, falsehood; 
and makes the precept in its strict sense condemn per- 
jury. Thou shalt not take up the name of Jehovah to 
a falsehood — shalt not use it to affirm the more solemnly 
what is false. Yet as what is false has no foundation 
in fact, and in point of truth is nothing — is only an 
emptiness — it comes to pass that this Hebrew word takes 
not infrequently this secondary sense — what is empty, 
vain. Hence some able critics [e. g. Keil] construe this 
precept to prohibit "all employment of the name of 
God for vain and unworthy objects so as to include not 
only false swearing, but trivial swearing in the ordin- 
ary intercourse of life and every use of the name of God 
in the service of untruth and lying — for imprecations, 

witchcraft, or conjuring."- The construction of Keil, 

being the more broad and comprehensive, and withal 
being clearly within the established usage of the orig- 
inal word, is to be preferred. The doctrine of inspiration 
is — "Thy commandment is exceeding broad" (Ps. 119: 

96). The name' of God is associated closely with the 

idea and thought of God. Hence all irreverent use of 
this name naturally begets irreverence of spirit toward 
God, and must be fearfully pernicious. Using God's 
sacred name to affirm the more solemnly a falsehood is 
more than mere irreverence, and must incur his high- 
est displeasure. 

The fourth command — the law of the Sabbath — has 
been already treated somewhat fully in connection with 
the original institution of the Sabbath in Eden. I 
must dissent entirely from those critics who deny the 
existence of any Sabbath law prior to Sinai. To " bless 
the seventh day and sanctify it" (as said in Gen. 2 : 3) 
has no meaning if it do not mean that God required 
the day to be one of rest from labor — a day of holy 



242 THE LAW OF £EN COMMANDMENTS. 

time, devoted to other than ordinary uses. Fully in 

harmony with this construction of these words is the 
allusion to the Sabbath in the history of the manna 
(Ex. 16: 22-30), and also the form of the precept here 
(Ex. 20: 8), which is not precisely — Thou shalt do all 
thy work during six days, but none on the seventh; — 
but it is this : " Remember the Sabbath-day to keep it 
holy." The implied injunction of the words spoken 
in Eden was — make it a holy day. God blessed the 
seventh day and made it holy : now, therefore, remem- 
ber that original injunction. To remember a previous 
day made holy, must surely imply a precept setting it 
apart as holy time. 

As given here the law of the Sabbath is expanded 
into its legitimate details. The prohibition of labor 
is applied to children, to servants, to cattle and to 
strangers. Then the reason for the command, essen- 
tially as given in Eden, is reiterated; "For in six days 
the Lord made heaven, earth, sea, and all creatures; 
but rested on the seventh day ; therefore he blessed and 
hallowed this Sabbath-day." Noticeably, the statement 
following " therefore/' uses the same Hebrew verbs — 
" bless," and " sanctify" [or " hallow"] which are used 

Gen. 2 : 3. It seems plainly implied that God places 

before men his own example of creative work during 
six day-periods and of rest from this work on the sev- 
enth as a reason or motive for their observance of the 
Sabbath — one day of rest after six of toil. A secondary 
consideration is doubtless that by this arrangement 
the Sabbath would be perpetually suggestive of man's 
relation to God as his Infinite Creator and Father. 
The linking of the Sabbath to God's creative work and 
rest would naturally make that work a fact ever pres- 
ent to human thought — blending its influence with 
the sacredness and with all the employments of this 
holy day. Man desists from labor. Why? Because 
God did. After what labor? That of making the 
heavens and the earth and man. Therefore let man 
remember God as his Creator and render him the hom- 
age of obedience and the homage of adoration, grati- 
tude and praise. Thus the historic origin of the 
precept became suggestive of the thoughts, the words, 
and the divine worship appropriate to this holy day. 

It is scarcely in place here to discuss the Christian 



THE LAW OF TEN COMMANDMENTS. 243 

change from the seventh to the first day of the week, 
further than to remark that a similar suggestive in- 
fluence came in as the purpose and object — the choice 
of the day suggesting the resurrection of Christ The orig- 
inal reference to God as Creator need not be practically 
lost : but we may practically gain a second group of 
suggestive and most vital truths — those which cluster 
round the resurrection of our Lord. 

V. The fifth command consecrates its strength to 
the family relation. Addressed to children it requires 
them to honor their father and their mother, and makes 
obedience the condition of long life and prosperity in 
the land of their promised inheritance. As read in 
Ex. 20: 12 the command specifies only long life, but 
as repeated in Deut. 5: 16, "that it may go well with 
thee" — is added. General prosperity is however in- 
volved and implied in length of days. Obviously 

this honor carries with it obedience as well as due re- 
spect. Such honor is vital to the happiness and the 
value of the family relation. Without it no founda- 
tion can ever be laid for a useful and worthy after-life. 
It should not be overlooked that the earliest training 
of the infant mind Godward should begin with culti- 
vating the honor and obedience due to father and 
mother. Through all the earliest developments of the 
infant and youthful mind, the parent is to the child 
in the place of God. The same qualities of character, 
the same obedience, respect, and deference, which God 
requires toward himself are to be first implanted and 
developed in the mind toward the human parent. 
Failing of their due development in this antecedent 
relation, they are almost certain never to be developed 
toward God: a fatal defect in character is fastened upon 
the child ; a cast of mind is determined which but too 

surely ends in hopeless ruin. It is noticeable that 

this very association of ideas, uniting the homage due 
to parentage and years with the honor due to God ap- 
pears in the Mosaic law (Lev. 19 : 32) ; " Thou shalt 
rise up before the hoary head and honor the face of the 
old man ; and fear thy God : I am the Lord." 

VI. The next four precepts are a series beginning 
with the most vital, designed to protect the rights of 
person and life ; of chastity ; of property ; and of repu- 
tation. The precepts forbid murder, adultery, theft, 



244 THE LAW OF TEN COMMANDMENTS* 

false witness, or defamation. The prohibition of mur- 
der must be construed broadly enough to forbid personal 
injuries on the one hand; and on the other all those 
passions — hate, malice prepense — which naturally lead 

on toward violence and murder. The prohibition of 

adultery in like manner forbids not only all illicit sex- 
ual connection, but even unchaste desire (Matt. 5 : 27, 
28). So the prohibition of theft devolves the duty of 
caring for our neighbor's property so far as the law of 
loving our neighbor as ourself would require. It is not 
enough that we do not take his property and appro- 
priate it to our own use. We must protect his right to 
his property as he should ours. In like manner the law 
forbidding the bearing of false witness against our 
neighbor involves the duty of protecting and cherish- 
ing his reputation. We may never forget that our 
neighbor's good name is a treasure to him which we 
not only must not steal away, but must so far as in us 
lies guard and defend as if his good were worth as 
much as our own. The one comprehensive principle 
which embraces all these points of law toward our 
neighbor and determines their true interpretation is 
given in the law of Moses as well as in the law of 
Christ — "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" 
(Lev. 19 : 34 and Matt. 22 : 39 and 19 : 19). As to this 
passage from Moses it should be noted that in terms it 
speaks not precisely of one's neighbor but of the 
stranger — one toward whom you are wont to think your 
obligations less than toward any other human being ; 
for he is not a brother born of the same father — not a 
relative of the same tribe — not a citizen of the same 
commonwealth or nationality ; but an alien, a foreigner, 
a stranger toward whom you recognize no other rela- 
tion than that of a fellow-being of human kind. Of 
such an one the law holds — " The stranger that dwell- 
eth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, 
and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in 
the land of Egypt : I am the Lord your God" — and I 
enjoin upon you this all-embracing love for the lowest 
of human kind. 

It should be carefully noted that although this group 
of four commands (6-9) in each case specifies the ex- 
treme form of the sin, the law by no means limits its 
prohibition to this extreme form. Killing is the ex- 



THE LAW OF TEN COMMANDMENTS. 245 

treme of personal violence ; adultery (strictly the crime 
of the married) is the most aggravated form of unchas- 
tity; theft is more than simply being reckless of your 
neighbor's property; and false witness naturally con- 
templates a case in court — public, formal, and of most 
grave and momentous consequences; — yet in each and 
every one of these prohibitions it behooves us to remem- 
ber that God looks at the heart ; that the spirit is more 
than the letter ; that the law which specifies the ex- 
treme form of a special sin forbids with its full force all 
the lower grades and all the less flagrant and revolting 
forms of the same sin. We wrong ourselves most fear- 
fully when we labor to ease our conscience by limiting 
the prohibitions of God's law to the extreme forms of 
sin which may be named in the statute. It is always 
our highest wisdom to deal very honestly with our own 
conscience as before God in the construction and appli- 
cation of his law. 

The tenth and last commandment is peculiar, as 
compared with all others of the second table, in this 
point— that it specifies no external act whatever but 
lays its prohibition directly upon the heart "Thou shalt 
not covet " — shalt not allow thyself to desire in such a 
w r ay as might tempt thee to try to obtain — thy neigh- 
bor's house, wife, servants, cattle, or any thing that he 
has. This law aims to forestall temptation. It strikes 
at the root of such sins as theft and adultery by forbid- 
ding any such desire as might move you toward the sin. 
It may be regarded as shielding both of the two parties ; 
the one who might commit the sin, and the one against 
whom the sin might be committed. It throws its shield 
over him who might otherwise be tempted, and it also 
becomes in so far a safeguard around him who holds 
treasures which lustful eyes might covet. 

Let us not omit to notice that it was this precept 
which opened the spiritual eye of Paul and gave him a 
new view of the breadth and true significance of God's 
law. " I had not known sin, (said he) but by the law ; 
for I had not known lust except the law had said, Thou 
shalt not covet" (Rom. 7: 7). His Pharisaic training 
(we may suppose) had been scrupulous over the tenth 
part of the mint and anise and cummin — had taken 
even ostentatious care of the external matters of the 
law ; but, alas ! had left the heart out. Here at the close 



246 PROGRESSIVE REVELATIONS. 

of the law of Sinai — last among the precepts that treat 
of duty to our neighbor — stands one which puts its 
finger squarely upon the heart It says — " Thou shalt not 
covet" It not only suggests that God looks within the 
soul of man for sin, but it demands that every man shall 
look there too and put his own restraining hand directly 
upon those rising desires which, indulged, would push 
him into overt sin. Moreover, this one precept may be 
supposed to have suggested to the mind of Paul that 
the whole law of God must be construed on this heart- 
principle — that every precept it contains goes beyond 
the letter to the spirit — pushes its demand deeper than 
the outward act, even to the inner thought, passion, and 
purpose of the soul. This view put the law of God in 
a new light — we might even say — revealed a new law 
to his soul. It gave him a new field for self-examina- 
tion ; brought up new sins never seen or dreamed of 
before, and at once demolished hopes of favor before God 
and of salvation on which he had perilously leaned 

through all his Pharisaic life. "Thy commandment " 

(said one of the Psalmists) " is exceeding broad " (Ps. 
119 : 96). We are not to think of all the Old Testa- 
ment saints as Pharisees. Let us rather hope that many 
of them read in the law of Sinai the law of love, and 
adjusted to it, not the outward life only but the very 
heart as well. 

Progress in the Revelation of God to Man. 

The first twenty chapters of Exodus cover a period 
eminently rich in point of progress in revealing God to 

the race. More fully than ever before God manifested 

those special elements of his character which are un- 
folded in the new name Jehovah — I am that I Am (Ex. 
3 : 14). He had given promises before ; then he came 
forth to fulfill them. He had talked with the patriarchs 
about faith, and had sought to inspire it in their souls. 
In these great deeds for his people he gave them dem- 
onstrations of his eternal faithfulness — a basis on which 
their faith might rest, and also the faith of every child 
of his through all the future ages. God came exceed- 
ingly near to his afflicted people in Egypt, and never 
missed any opportunity of suggesting and impressing 
the idea that these tender testimonies of his love were 



PROGRESSIVE REVELATIONS. 247 

in proof of his fidelity to promise — were the very acts 
which his covenant with Abraham involved and called 
for — called for of their covenant God not in vain. 

Again, we see here the possibility of very great intimacy 
of communion between God and man. As bearing on this 
point the reader will review the scene between Moses 
and the Lord at the burning bush ; in his mission to 
Pharaoh; in the special directions given him in regard 
to the sending of each several plague, and usually as to 
its removal as well. Did ever earthly Potentate stand 
on more intimate terms with his prime minister ? Or 
military chieftain with his subordinate officer ? If 
Moses was at any point reluctant, under a conscious 
sense of capacities unequal to the work and of difficul- 
ties he could not surmount, did he not bring the matter 
before the Lord with at least as much freedom as the 

case could justify? Especially when we think of 

Moses coming so near to Jehovah in his majesty wield- 
ing the terrific agencies of flood and storm and fire, of 
darkness and lightning and the voice of trumpet ex- 
ceeding loud — Mt. Sinai rocking beneath his feet, and 
Moses alone drawing near the Awful Presence and 
talking with God face to face there — what shall we say 
of the possibilities of communion between man and his 
Maker ? Whatever speculations we may have as to the 
means and methods by which the thought of God was 
borne to the mind of Moses and the thought of Moses 
to the mind of God, the great fact of communion of mind 
with mind — thought meeting thought — of command 
from the superior party, received and obeyed by the in- 
ferior — is on the outer face of the whole history and 
admits of no question. God can speak to man so that 
man shall know the voice to be his and comprehend 
perfectly its significance. Relations of obedience, con- 
fidence, and love on the part of man toward his Maker 
are established, and God meets them with appropriate 
manifestations of his favor. 

This great fact is one of telling significance in the 
whole province of Christian experience. Its significance 
can not terminate with the present life but must pass 
on to be unfolded far more gloriously in the revelations 
of the eternal world. " It doth not yet appear " [in all 
points] " what we shall be " — but it does appear that 
God has made us capable of exceedingly intimate rela- 



248 PROGRESSIVE REVELATIONS. 

tions to himself— as we shall know more perfectly when 
we shall see as w r e are seen and know as also we are 
known. 

Yet again; This portion of historic revelation 
abounds with testimonies to the power of prayer and to its 
place in the relations of God to man and of man to God. 
We see these revelations in the history of the plagues 
on Egypt. So palpably manifest was the power of 
Moses with God in prayer that even proud Pharaoh 
saw and recognized it. Over and over again the king 
besought the prayers of the man of God — apparently 
with unlimited confidence that God would grant what- 
ever he should ask. Though he never had seen such 
power in prayer before, the force of the facts was too 
great to be resisted. For once he became so far a be- 
liever in the communion of man with God, and also in 
the power of God to work wonders which man's power 
alone could never reach. 

The war scenes with Amalek and the prayer which 
turned the victory to Israel's side will be readily re- 
called. As already suggested, this specimen case, 
brought out so perfectly in the first national conflict of 
arms, was well adapted to send down to future ages the 
great secret of success against their national enemies. 
How happy for Israel if it had never been forgotten ! 
How well for the Christian world if the lessons of that 
scene were faithfully transferred and applied in all 
spiritual conflicts against foes within and foes without 
which pertain to this ever militant state ! 

It is scarcely necessary to speak in fuller detail of the 
revelations of God to man through miracle. Every page 
of this history teems with miracles. Take the miracles 
away, and truly there would be nothing left. The rev- 
elations of God's will to Moses ; the judgments on Egypt ; 
the redemption of his people from bondage there; the 
scenes at the Eed Sea ; the bread and the water for his 
needy people ; the pillar of cloud and of fire ; the glories 
of Sinai and the giving of his law in voice of majesty : — 
what are all these but miracles — the Great God over- 
stepping the ordinary course of nature to impress him- 
self, the power of his arm, the mandates of his will — 
upon human minds? No other such chapter on mir- 
acles appears in the Old Testament. Nowhere else do 
they cluster so grandly ; not elsewhere do they so much 



PROGRESSIVE REVELATIONS. 249 

supersede the common laws of nature and give char- 
acter to the entire course of the divine administration. 
Most abundantly do they testify that the arm of the 
Lord is equal to any result which his wisdom may 
devise. If he has purposes to accomplish he can not 
lack the means or the power necessary. The age of 
miracles can be brought round again if so he wills it. 
But more to our purpose is the inference to the ade- 
quacy of his resources in general, whether with or with- 
out miracle. Yet let us not miss the more vital truth 

that this cluster of miracles aimed to witness to God's 
present hand working with Moses, endorsing his mis- 
sion and accrediting his words from the most High. 
God was then specially active in "making history'' 
(shall we say?) — making history to put into his Bible. 
The Bible was growing ; the great crisis which devel- 
oped into the birth of the Hebrew nation was then 
transpiring; God's plans for training a people who 
should be holy to himself — the repository of his truth — 
the church of the living God — were then rapidly un- 
folding ; and no vital step in this process could spare the 
agency of miracle. 

Yet again; In this portion of sacred history much 
new light has been thrown upon GocVs management of 
great sinners. Pharaoh was a standard case of this sort. 
As already suggested, there are many aspects of this 
management. On one side we see the strong arm, 
putting his hook into the jaws of Leviathan — curbing 
his spirit, breaking down his power; burying him and 
his hosts in the sea. On another side are unfolded the 
nice relations of even this resistless power to the free 
moral activities of the great sinner; the wonderful 
blending of mercies with judgments; the patient wait- 
ing — if possibly these manifestations of God's hand 
may bring the proud king to real submission; and 
coupled with this, the steady purpose on God's part to 
turn all Pharaoh's pride and guilt and moral obduracy 
to best possible account — setting forth his mode of deal- 
ing with wicked men in making known his power to 
save his people and to crush their foes, and his unfail- 
ing wisdom in making the wrath of the proudest of 
mortals evolve his own glory and praise. 

The scenes of Sinai were a long and magnificent step 



250 PROGRESSIVE REVELATIONS. 

of progress in the revelations of God to men. We may- 
think here not so much of the external surroundings— 
the bringing into service of all the grandest agencies of 
nature to impress men with reverence and fear and 
awe, and so to plant the more deeply in their souls the 
idea of law as emanating unmistakably from the In- 
finite One; but we may consider the great fact itself of a 
revealed law. It is surely a point in the progress of 
God's revelations of himself second to nothing that has 
gone before — second to nothing in all the ages save the 
greater mission of his Son for the purposes of re- 
demption. God revealing to man a rule of duty; ex- 
pressing it in terms at once so simple and so compre- 
hensive ; including the duties we owe to God on the one 
hand and to fellow-beings on the other ; putting it on 
permanent record; accompanying it with demonstra- 
tions of majesty and glory, endorsing it so surely and 
so sublimely ; adjusting it so nicely in harmony with 
the intelligent convictions of rational minds, and so 
commending it to every man's conscience as intrin- 
sically and eternally right : — truly the promulgation of 
such a law through such agencies is surpassingly grand 
and glorious ; and, in the line of our present thought, is 
one of the great epochs in the march of God's revela- 
tions of himself to mortals. We pause before it to take 
in the value of this revealed law; the new relations 
into which the race are brought thereby toward their 
Great Father; and the bearings of this law upon the 
whole plan of God's moral administration toward our 
fallen race. 



CHAPTER XVI, 



THE HEBEEW THEOCRACY. 

Naturally following the national covenant (Ex. 19) 
and the giving of the law from Sinai (Ex. 20) and 
preliminary to the civil code — " the statutes and judg- 
ments " — comes in the Theocracy — a term used to desig- 
nate the system of government established for the He- 
brew people. 

Here we may consider briefly the following points : 

I. The Supreme Poiver. 

II. The powers of Jehovah's vicegerents — his chief exec- 
utive officers. 

III. The general assembly or congregation, and their 
elders, 

IV. The scope afforded for self-government-democ- 
racy. 

V. The fundamental principles of this entire system. 

VI. Its union of church and state. 

VII. Its principles and usages in respect to ivar, with 
a notice of the war-commission against the doomed 
Canaanites. 

I. The Supreme Power. 

God himself was king. In every respect the su- 
preme power was his. Precisely this is the sense of the 
term "theocracy" — a government of God. 

This comprehensive fact appears in the following 
particulars : 

1. God demanded supreme homage as their king (Ex. 
19: 6 and Deut. 6: 4-15, and 7: 6-11, and 10: 12-21, 
and 33 : 4, 5 and 1 Sam. 8 : 6-8, and 10 : 18, 19 and Judg. 
8 : 23). 

2. God enacted the statutes. He was the Supreme 
Lawgiver. We sometimes speak of the " Mosaic code," 
of the "statutes of Moses," meaning by these phrases 
only that the statutes came from God to the people by 
the hand of Moses ; never that Moses was himself the 

(251) 



252 THE THEOCRACY. 

author of these statutes — the true legislator. (See Ex. 
21: land Deut. 6: 1). 

3. God nominated the chief executive. He called Moses 
(Ex. 3 : 10, 12, and 4 : 16 and 1 Cor. 10 : 2) ; and Joshua 
(Num. 27 : 18-23 and Deut. 3 : 28, and 31 : 3 and Josh. 
1: and 5: 13-15). The same was true of the Judges, 
raised up for special emergencies (Judg. 2 : 16, 18, and 
3 : 9, 15, and 4 : 6, and 6: 12, etc., etc.) God called the 
kings :— Saul (1 Sam. 9 : 17, and 10 : 1) ; also David (1 
Sam. 13 : 14, and 16 : 1 and 2 Sam. 5 : 2 and Ps. 78 : 70, 
71) ; and to name no more, Solomon (1 Chron. 28 : 5). 

4. In all cases not otherwise provided for, the ulti- 
mate appeal was to God. In point we have (Num. 16 
and 17) a case of resistance to the authority of Moses — 
incipient rebellion. God interposed with his supreme 
authority. We have a case in civil law, not reached by 
the statutes, viz. the entailment of real estate in a fam- 
ily of daughters only. Moses brought it before the 
Lord for adjudication (Num. 27 : 5). A special pro- 
vision respecting the marriage of daughters holding 
property in land became necessary : this new law was 
sought from God (Num. 36: 6). A criminal case oc- 
curred in which the law was not explicit ; " it was not 
declared what should be done" with the criminal 
(Num. 15 : 32-36). The Lord gave them the law for 

the case. In the case of Achan (Josh. 7) the Lord 

interposed, not so much because there was no law for 
its decision as because the sin was flagrant and the 
demand for exemplary punishment was very great. 

In cases which would appropriately require the 

calling of a Supreme Council, the people sought di- 
rection from God. (See Judg. 1 : 1, and 20: 18, 27, 28 
and 1 Sam. 14: 37, and 23 : 2, 4, 9-12, and 28 : 6, and 30: 
8 and 2 Sam. 2 : 1). God made provision through the 
prophets for a direct revelation of his will to the people 
in special cases not otherwise provided for (Deut. 
18 : 18). 

5. In later times the demand of the people for a hu- 
man king seemed to be constructive treason. It might 
be so understood, and therefore the Lord reasserted his 
prerogative, although he yielded to their demands (1 
Sam. 8: 6-9, and 10: 17-25). 

6. It scarcely need be said that God bound himself by 
promise to reward the people with all national prosper- 



THE POWERS OF JEHOVAH'S VICEGERENT. 253 

ity if obedient, and by threatening, to punish them 
with national calamity for disobedience. These points 
are expanded fully Lev. 26: and Deut. chapters 27-30. 

That God inflicted these threatened punishments 

early in their nation's history may be seen Num. 11 : 
33, and 16: 1-50. 

Thus it appears that in every appropriate way and 
in numerous vital respects God manifested his supreme 
authority over his people Israel. 

II. The powers of Jehovah's vicegerent. 

Of this we have illustrations in the cases of Moses, 
Joshua, the Judges, and the kings. These cases show 
that they were precisely the Lord's prime ministers, 
commissioned to execute his will. If a law touching 
the case existed and its application was clear, they 
simply adjudicated the case and put the law in force. 
If no statute touching the case was extant, they sought 
one. If the application of the law baffled their wis- 
dom, they sought counsel from God. Hence the Scrip- 
tures speak of these prime ministers as the Lord's 
"servants," to serve him in this high capacity. (See 
Num. 12 : 7 and Heb. 3 : 2, 5 and Josh. 1 : 1, 2, and 5 : 
13-15 and 2 Sam. 7 : 8, etc.) 

Of the officers holding under the chief executive 
there is no occasion to speak in great detail. The sys- 
tem of subordinate judges — lower courts — has come to 
view in the history of Jethro (Ex. 18). In Canaan 
they held their courts in the gates of large cities, and 
(for certain criminal cases) in the cities of refuge which 
were cities of the Levites — from which tribe judges 
seem largely to have been drawn. 

The " elders " — " heads of the house of their fathers " — 
held important responsibilities — a fact due largely to 
the influence of the patriarchal system which had come 
down from the earliest times, the usages of which, there- 
fore, had essentially the force of common law in Israel. 
It was in great measure due to them that after the 
death of Joshua the processes of government went on 
without any chief executive, with no king, and with no 
Supreme Judge except as the High Priest may have 
performed that function. 



254 THE THEOCRACY. 

III. The General Assembly or Congregation, and the 
Elders. 

We read of great conventions, congregations, assem- 
blies, in which it is not definitely said that all the 
people were there; and also of convocations in which 
"all the people " were present. In some at least of the 
cases of the latter sort, the elders seem to have acted 
distinctly from the masses of the people, being the 
media of communication (as the case may be) between 
the Lord or his servant Moses of the one party and 
the people at large of the other. Thus shortly before 
the giving of the law from Sinai when God ratified a 
national covenant with the people, we read — "Moses 
called for the elders of the people and laid before their 
faces all these words which the Lord commanded him. 
And all the people answered together and said — All 
that the Lord hath spoken we will do" (Ex. 19 : 7, 8). 
Moses spake to the people through their elders. It was 
naturally impossible that any one human voice could 

be heard by six hundred thousand men. So in 1 Sam. 

8 : 4-10 " the elders gathered together and said to Sam- 
uel, Make us a king ;" " and the Lord said unto Samuel, 
Hearken unto the voice of the people" " And Samuel told 
all the words of the Lord unto the people that asked of 

him a king." These elders — chiefs of the people — 

seem to have been a well-defined class. Note how they 
are designated (Num. 1 : 16) ; " These are the renowned 
[Heb. the called ones] of the congregation, princes of the 
tribes *of their fathers, heads of thousands in Israel." 
Also Num. 16: 2: "Two hundred and fifty princes of 
the assembly, famous in the congregation " [Heb. the 
called ones of the congregation, i. e. the men summoned 

to represent their constituents], " men of renown." 

The question will arise whether these called men, the 
recognized heads and representatives of the people, held 
specially delegated powers; whether they were ap- 
pointed for an occasion and were instructed by the 
people : or whether they held the headship, this repre- 
sentative power, by virtue of the ancient usages of the 
patriarchal system. The latter is the true view, for the 
patriarchal system had the prestige of common law ; 
and we find not the least hint of any election of these 
" heads of the house of their fathers" for any special 



SCOPE FOR DEMOCRACY. 255 

function — no notice of their receiving special instruc- 
tions to act as delegated representatives of the people. 

Let it be noted carefully that on all really great 

occasions when the vital issues of their covenant rela- 
tion with God were pending, "all the people" — the 
solid masses — were convened, and of course their elders 
and high officers with them. We see such a case before 
Sinai (Ex. 19) ; another, shortly before the death of 
Moses, in a solemn ratification of their national cove- 
nant : " Ye stand this day all of you before the Lord 
your God; your captains of your tribes, your elders 
and your officers, with all the men of Israel " (Deut. 
29 : 10-12), " that thou shouldest enter into covenant 

with the Lord thy God," etc. Again ; after they had 

entered Canaan in the scene of rehearsing the blessings 
and the curses of the law from Mt. Gerizim and Mt. 
Ebal : " And all Israel and their elders and officers and 
their judges, stood, ?; etc. (Josh. 8 : 33). See also Josh. 
23 : 2 and 24 : 1 and Judg. 20 : 1 and 1 Sam. 8. It 
was supremely appropriate that every man of Israel 
should give his voice and heart in these great national 
consecrations of themselves to their nation's God. The 
Lord sought to call into action every mind — to make a 
deep moral impression on every heart. Therefore none 
could be exempted ; no man could be excused for ab- 
sence. 

IV. The scope afforded under this system for self- 
government — democracy. 

It is readily obvious that under this theocracy, the 
function of legislators was out of the question. The peo- 
ple did not make their own laws: these were given 
them — made by the Lord alone. It only remained for 
them to say whether they would accept the Lord their 
God as their Lawgiver and Supreme King. Such as- 
sent and consent on their part was appropriate; and 
precisely this they gave — as we may see in the case of 
the moral law of Sinai (Ex. 19 : 3-8 and Deut. 5: 27, 
28) ; and of all the statutes and judgments of their civil 
code (Ex. 24 : 3). This national recognition of God as 
Supreme Lawgiver was renewed from time to time 
with subsequent generations of Israel (Deut. 29: 10-15 
and Josh. 24: 15-27 and Neh. 10: 28, 29), etc. 
12 



256 THE THEOCRACY. 

Thus it appears that the laws under which they 
lived were not arbitrarily imposed upon them without 
their consent — much less, against their will ; but only 
with their formal and solemn consent. So far forth, 
their government involved an element of freedom and 
of self-control. They were not tyrannously coerced into 
subjection to laws which they repudiated. A system 
of law, in itself most excellent and entirely unexcep- 
tionable, was presented to them for their adoption or 
rejection. They adopted it — apparently with the 
warmest approbation. 

Essentially the same principle obtained in regard to 
their highest human executive officer. They did not 
nominate and choose Moses of their own motion. No 
caucus, no primary meeting, no formal election brought 
out his name as the choice of the people. The Lord 
alone raised up Moses, prepared him for the position 
he was to hold and brought him before the people. 
Then they received him as their leader (Ex. 4 : 29-31 
and 20: 19 and Deut. 5: 27). In the same manner 
they accepted Joshua (Josh. 1: 16-18). In the case of 
Saul, their first king, the Lord nominated, and the peo- 
ple ratified his nomination (1 Sam. 10 : 24 and 11 : 14, 
15). The Lord called David also (1 Sam. 16: 1-12), 
but the people accepted him as king and cordially rati- 
fied his divine nomination (2 Sam. 5: 1-3). Through 
his prophet Nathan the Lord gave the kingdom to 
David's posterity (2 Sam. 7 :) and prophetically indi- 
cated Solomon (1 Chron. 22 : 8, 9 and 1 Kings 1 : 13, 29, 
30); but the people still gave their full-hearted con- 
sent (1 Kings 1 : 39, 40). The same powers were as- 
serted by the people in the case of Rehoboam (1 Kings 
12: 1-20). 

It should be specially noted that when the govern- 
ment assumed the form of a human monarchy — an 
earthly king reigning under God in this real theocracy, 
it was a limited, not an absolute monarchy. The Mo- 
saic law anticipated this change and imposed certain 
constitutional limitations upon the prospective king 
(Deut. 17: 14-20). He must be one whom the Lord 
should choose ; of native and not foreign birth ; must 
not multiply horses, nor wives, nor treasures of silver 
and gold ; must keep by him a copy of the law given 
through Moses, must read it and regard it as the con- 



SCOPE FOR DEMOCRACY. 257 

stitution under which he reigned. When the demand 
for a king arose Samuel forewarned the people of the 
assumptions of power which, by the usages of mankind, 
they must expect in their king (1 Sam. 8: 10-17), and 
took the precaution to put in writing "the manner of 
the kingdom" — the constitutional provisions and safe- 
guards under which he was to reign (1 Sam. 10 : 25). 
No copy of this constitution has come down to us ; but 
it doubtless corresponded essentially with the limita- 
tions made by the law of Moses as in Deut. 17 : 14-20. 
The voice of the people in self-government appears 
also in the appointment of the judges who were to ad- 
minister the law in courts of justice. We have seen how 
the old patriarchal system was enlarged and modified 
at the suggestion of Jethro (Ex. 18 : 13-26). This first 
narrative seems to rest the appointment of these judges 
entirely with Moses ; but his own more detailed account 
(Deut. 1 : 9-18) shows that the people were heard in the 
nomination : " Take you wise men and understanding, 
and known among your tribes, and I will make them 
rulers over you. And ye answered me and said — The 
thing which thou hast spoken is good for us to do. So 

1 took the chief men of your tribes, wise men and known, 
and made them heads over you," etc. Plainly these 
men had acquired position by merit, and held their 
place and power (before this special appointment) by 

the general consent of the people. The general law 

in the case runs — " Judges and officers shalt thou make 
thee in all thy gates, etc., and they shall judge the peo- 
ple with just judgment " (Deut. 16 : 18). 

Self-government is further developed in the independ- 
ent action which we may notice occasionally in the 
several tribes. Especially in the period from Joshua 
to Saul, the several tribes acted singly, or in union 
with one or more of their fellow-tribes at their option 
(Judg. 1 : 1-3, 22 and 4: 10 and 7: 23, 24 and 8 : 23, 
and 20: 11-46). Special cases of this independent 

action appear in 1 Chron. 4 : 41-43 and 5 : 18-23. On 

great occasions, the people convened en masse for delib- 
eration and united action as in Josh. 22 : 12, 16 and 2, 3 : 

2 and Judg. 20 and 21. Obviously they assumed the 

right to disapprove the action of their princes as in the 
case of the Gibeonites (Josh. 9 : 18, 19) — " All the con- 
gregation murmured against the princes." 



258 THE THEOCRACY. 



V. The Fundamental Principles of this entire System. 

1. Jehovah being their Supreme King, supreme love 
and worship must be rendered to him. 

2. Idolatry was a state offense, nothing less than high 
treason, and therefore a capital crime, punishable with 
death. Any one of their cities, given to idolatry, must 
be utterly exterminated (Deut. 13: 1-18 and 17 : 2-7). 

3. The most stringent laws ordained non-intercourse 
with idolatrous nations and non-conformity to their 
customs. Inter-marriages with them were strictly pro- 
hibited; trade and commerce were at least discouraged 
if not forbidden. These laws may be seen in Ex. 34 : 
11-17 and Deut. 7: 1-5, 16, 23-26; and cases of their 
application in Num. 25 and 31 ; also in Ezra 9 and 10 
and Neh. 13: 23-31. 

Sundry customs, some of which might in themselves 
be of small account, were prohibited, apparently because 
associated with idolatry in the usages of other nations 
and in the ideas of the people of Israel (Deut. 14 : 1-21 
and Lev. 20 : 23-26). The distinction between clean 
and unclean beasts seems to fall under this principle. 

4. This Hebrew Theocracy w r as engrafted upon a 
previously existing patriarchal government, and there- 
fore it recognized this previous system as substantially 
the common law of the land, to be in force except so far 
as modified by special legislation under the new regime 
given from the Lord through Moses. This principle is 
illustrated in the powers and functions of the elders, 
known as "heads of the house of their fathers"; 
" princes " ; " heads of the thousands of Israel " (Ex. 6 : 
25, and Num. 3 : 24, 30, 35, and 1 : 16, and 10: 4). 

5. It was manifestly an accepted principle, underlying 
the entire system, to give the people as wide a range 
of free responsible action as a theocratic government 
would admit. Democracy must of necessity be subor- 
dinate to theocracy; the self-ruling of the people must 
find its place under the supreme ruling of Jehovah. 
Consequently the law must come entire from God, not 
from the people. The chief executive must receive his 
commission from God, though he might be formally ac- 
cepted and his appointment in this way ratified by the 
people. The Lord sought the willing homage of the 



ITS UNION OF CHURCH AND STATE. 259 

people — the obedience of their heart — and therefore 
encouraged the most cheerful and hearty expression 
of their will and of their homage in entering into 
covenant with himself, and from time to time in 
solemnly renewing it. He would have them feel 
that they were the people of the Lord by their own 
real consent and hearty acceptance. So much democ- 
racy therefore entered into their scheme of national 
polity. So much there might be. In the nature of a 
theocracy, there could not be more. 

6. As elsewhere shown, the statutes were within cer- 
tain limits graduated in moral tone to the moral status 
of the people, being as high as they would bear — as near 
theoretical perfection as could be made effective — i. e. 
as could secure a general obedience. 

VI. Its union of t Church and State. 

By this modern phrase is currently meant the subor- 
dination of the church to the civil or state authorities. 
Such a union in the Hebrew nation was a natural con- 
sequent upon a theocratic government. The civil code 
coming from God himself, the religious code must come 
from him by obvious fitness, not to say necessity. In 
his entire policy with Israel, God sought the most ef- 
fective moral culture. We find this purpose underlying 
the entire civil government with its code of civil laws ; 
it must of course underlie their religious institutions. 
Hence the church and the state were worked not only 
by the same hand but for the same general purpose. 

"in practice certain crimes against the religious law 
were enforced by the state. Idolatry was a state offense, 
punishable as other state crimes. So of perjury and 

blasphemy. (Dent. 19 : 16-19.) It was due to the 

common relations of church and state that to a great 
extent the religious orders were civil judges. In the 
absence of a king or other chief executive, the High 
Priest seems to have held that function. (See Deut. 
17: 12 and 2 Chron. 19 : 8-11). The subordinate judges 
were largelv taken from the priests and Levites (Deut. 
21:5, and 33: 10). 

Since the system provided for an ultimate appeal to 
God, extreme cases were taken up for the sake of such 
appeal to the one place which was for the time the seat 



260 THE THEOCRACY. 

of God's special manifestations to his people (Deut. 17 : 
8-13, and 19 : 17). 

The wisdom of this joint action of the civil law with 
the religious admits in their case of no question. It 
may suffice to refer in proof to the omnipresent power 
of idolatry through all the ages from Moses to the cap- 
tivity, to show the vital need of the civil arm to sustain 
the true worship of God and save the nation. On the 
other hand the state was the stronger for her religious 
institutions. The great religious festivals, bringing 
the masses of the male population from every tribe 
three times a year for a sacred week of communion 
must have been of priceless value in sustaining the na- 
tional unity and a national patriotism. Jeroboam was 
sharp enough to see that the calves at Bethel and Dan 
must take the place of the festivals at Jerusalem, or his 
kingdom would melt away from under him, and his 
people give their civil fealty as well as their religious 
homage at the old center. Hezekiah would have 
brought the ten tribes back if he could have drawn 
their people in a body to the great Passover, as he 

sought to do. Hence it is quite safe to say that the 

state .was the stronger for the national religion, and 

their religion the stronger for the aid of the state. 

Yet let none rush to the inference that such mutual 
relations of church and state are therefore wise and use- 
ful in the Christian age of the world. The providences 
of God shut off from the primitive church the possibil- 
ity of such union and shut up Christianity to make her 
first great conquests under the sturdy opposition of the 
greatest civil power of the age. Experience has long 
since disproved the inference above referred to. The 
cases are too dissimilar to admit of any logical reason- 
ing from that age to this. 

In the Hebrew economy we are struck with the fact 
that both the religious and the civil code were enforced 
chiefly by considerations and influences, rewards and 
punishments, coming in from the present world — not 
from the future. Let it be supposed that religious 
duties were in our age enforced by such motives 
chiefly — and we should see at a glance the change that 
has passed over the world since Moses uttered the con- 
cluding chapters of Deuteronomy. Idolatry, then the 
head sin of the ages, was fitly resisted, not only by the 



THE HEBREW CODE ON WAR. 261 

civil arm, but by the most fearful array of civil pains 
and penalties. The capital sins of Christendom are 
now of quite other sort; and the motives to repent- 
ance come appropriately from the other worlds yet be- 
fore us and not from this. It may be difficult for us to 
realize how stern the necessity was that God should in 
the earlier ages govern the world, and not least his own 
people, by motives from the visible and not from the 
invisible world — from earth and time and the present 
life, and not from the eternal, the future and yet unseen 
state. 

[This subject will receive further attention near the 
close of this volume]. 

VII. The principles and usages of the Hebrew code in re- 
spect to tear; with some notice of the icar-edict for the ex- 
tirpation of the Canaanites. 

By their constitution the war-power was with God. 
The power and. the right to declare war rested in him 
alone. He forbade them to make war on Edom; he 
commanded them to exterminate Amalek and the de- 
voted nations of Canaan, and to " vex the Midianites 
and smite them n (As to Edom, see Deut. 2 : 5 ; as to 
Amalek, Ex. 17 : 8, 14, 16 and Deut. 25 : 17-19 ; as to the 

Midianites, Num. 25: 17, 18, and 31:). Their 

rulers were expected to bring the question before the 
Lord — Shall I in this case go up to battle, or shall I 

forbear? (Judg. 1 : 1, and 20: 18, 23, 28). Any one 

tribe might go out to war alone, or might call in the 
aid of another or of all : — a fact which shows that the 
tribes were confederated rather than united and consol- 
idated. On great occasions, of common danger, all the 
tribes associated together, and, with certain specified 
exceptions, every man able for war was required to go. 
The exceptions are given (Deut. 20 : 5-8) ; viz. the man 
who had built a house, but had not dedicated it ; he 
who had planted a vineyard but had not eaten of its 
fruits; he who had betrothed a wife, yet had not taken 
her; and finally, every fearful and faint-hearted man; — 
i. e. all who had special attractions homeward which 
might tempt them to desert the ranks, and they whose 
timid hearts made them worthless and might be con- 
tagious : — in the words of the statute, " Lest his broth- 



262 THE THEOCRACY. 

er's heart faint as well as his heart." Personal heroism 
was of prime account — a heroism inspired by faith in 
Israel's God. The history every-where shows that such 
armies, fired with religious enthusiasm, strong by faith 
in the mighty God, were terrible in battle, and for the 
most part certain of victory. Often as we read these 
annals of the wars of Israel, we can not resist the con- 
viction that they were means of grace as well as of 
manhood— -an illustration of which may be seen in 

David before Goliath the Philistine (1 Sam. 17). 

When only a small number of men were needed, they 
were chosen, picked men, naturally the brave, skilled, 
and renowned. See Joshua's first battle (Ex. 17 : 9) ; 
his assault upon Ai (Josh. 7 : 7), and the sifting of Gid- 
eon's army (Judg. 7 : 1-8). 

The grant of Canaan to Israel and the commission to extir- 
pate the Canaanites. 

These points call for special examination. 
£ It has been objected against the morality of the Old 
Testament Scriptures that this war-law enjoining the 
extirpation of the Canaanites was cruel and unjust; 
hence that it either misrepresents God and therefore 
disproves the divine authority of the Old Testament ; 
or if it truly represents the God of the Bible, then he 
does not deserve the homage and the love of his creat- 
ures. These are grave charges and should be candidly 

examined. 

The grant of Canaan and the commission to destroy 
the Canaanites have been vindicated by Michaelis and 
others on the following grounds. 

1. The right of prior possession and occupation. 

2. This right kept good by burial there, and not by 
any means relinquished when Jacob was driven by 
stress of famine into Egypt and then detained there by 
force. 

3. This right protected according to their ability by 
reassertion, perpetually holding forth their purpose to 
return and their recognition of Canaan as their land of 
promise. 

4. That no argument prejudicial to their right of 
war against the Canaanites can be drawn from the ab- 
sence of formal manifesto, setting forth the causes of 
the war, inasmuch as such a setting forth of grounds 



THE WAR-LAW AGAINST CANAANITES. 263 

and causes of war is a thing of modern and not of 
ancient usage. 

This course of argument in defense of the war-law in 
question seems to me defective and quite below the 
truth in the following points : 

1. Its primary position — prior occupancy — seems not 
fully made out. 

2. It makes too little account of God's original and 
perfect title to all the earth, and his consequent right 
to give his people any portion of it at his pleasure. 

3. It fails to give due prominence to the moral 
grounds assigned by God himself for the extirpation of 
the Canaanites, viz. their extreme debasement in char- 
acter; their abominable wickedness; their horrible 
violations of the common humanities of social life. 

As to prior occupation, Michaelis says the original 
home of the Canaanites was Arabia; that Herodotus 
testifies that at first they dwelt near the Red Sea; 
Justin, that they had another country before they 
came to Palestine ; and Abulfeda that they dwelt in 
Arabia. But in proof that they were in Palestine be- 
fore Abraham was, Moses affirms (Gen. 12 : 6) that 
when Abram first passed through, "the Canaanite was 
then in the land ;" also that when Abram and Lot, be- 
ing rich in cattle and " the land unable to bear them," 
"the Canaanite and the Perizzite were then in the 
land" (Gen. 13: 7); and further still in his earliest 
account of the location of primitive families after the 
flood, he says — "The border of the Canaanites was 
from Sidon as thou comest to Gerar unto Gaza as thou 
goest to Sodom and Gomorrah," etc. (Gen. 10: 19). 
This is the oldest known historic testimony, and un- 
questionably locates the Canaanites in the original 

land of Canaan. Moreover, it is said that Abraham 

went with his flocks and herds wherever he would as 
if lord of the country. It may be replied — So appar- 
ently did the Canaanites also. If Abraham dug wells, 
so did they ; if he buried his dead there, so did they- - 
with this incidental fact in their favor ; viz. that Abra- 
ham bought ground of them and paid money for his 
cemetery at Macpelah. This special argument from 
prior possession can scarcely be sustained. 



264 THE THEOCRACY. 

But it may be maintained that Abram was there 
very early; and what is more, God's first call to him to 
leave his native country named Canaan as his promised 
land ; and every successive promise reaffirmed this gift. 
Abraham's title to Canaan therefore rests on God's 
right to give a perfect title. If the Lord of heaven and 
earth, the Great Creator of all lands in all the ends of 
the earth had not a right to give Canaan to Abraham 
and his posterity, then he is not God. Unquestionably 
he assumed this right and in the exercise of it pledged 
Canaan to the posterity of Abraham with perpetual 
reiteration and most solemn covenant. This fact is 
the more significant because it is the first step in a 
series of acts all of which aimed to reveal himself be- 
fore the world of mankind as the true God and the 
Lord of the whole earth. With these ends in view he 
chose this people and made them his own ; manifested 
himself among them and before all the world as their 
covenant-keeping God; gave them Canaan, and by 
manifold miracles helped them to gain possession of it. 
Nor is this argument weakened by the fact that by 
means of a special series of providences he led them 
down into Egypt to dwell there 430 years; suffering 
the Canaanites meanwhile to hold Canaan, not driving 
them out earlier because " the iniquity of the Amorites 
was not yet full" (Gen. 15: 16). Here is suggested 
the real ground on which the edict for extirpating the 
Canaanites was made to rest. God suffered them to 
remain there until they had forfeited their title not to 
Canaan alone, but to life itself and to any further na- 
tional existence. 

This point is too vital to be passed without careful 
attention. In Lev. 18 we meet with a series of crimes 
against moral purity — violations of the seventh com- 
mandment — culminating in sodomy and bestiality ; 
and classed with these is the burning of children in 
the worship of Moloch (v. 21). Then God says — " De- 
file not yourselves in any of these things ; for in all 
these the nations are defiled which I cast out before 
you, and the land is defiled; therefore do I visit the ini- 
quity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out 

her inhabitants." The same sentiments are repeated 

(vs. 26-30). Unnatural lusts had sunk both men and 
women not only down to a level with beasts, but even 



THE WAR-LAW AGAINST CANAANITES. 265 

below them. Idolatry had so far quenched the sweet 
humanities from the parental heart that fathers and 
mothers could burn their own sons and daughters to 
Moloch. These horrible, unnatural crimes were not 
only an outrage against the heart of God the Great 
Father; but, as he forcibly puts it, they defiled the very 
land itself. The earth was nauseated with these abom- 
inations and spued out such inhabitants. God's fair 
and much abused world could bear them no longer. 
Nature herself lifted her voice of protest against such 
wickedness; or, as the strong figure suggests, her 
stomach sickened even to nausea over such unnatural 
lusts and such a torturing death of innocent sons and 
daughters. What could a holy and righteous God do 
with such a people but wipe them out of existence 
and wash the land they had defiled clean of such pol- 
lutions? Lev. 20 reiterates substantially the same 

list of abominations against which God warns his peo- 
ple ; — " Ye shall therefore keep all my statutes and all 
my judgments and do them, that the land whither I 
bring you to dwell therein, spue you not out And ye 
shall not walk in the manner of the nations which I 
cast out before you ; for they committed all these 

things, and therefore I abhorred them (vs. 22, 23). 

Perfectly definite and explicit is the repetition of the 
same point in Deut. 12: 30, 31. When the Lord shall 
have cut off the Canaanites before thee, be not snared 
into their ways ; inquire not after their gods and ways 
of worship : — " Thou shalt not do so unto the Lord thy 
God, for every abomination to the Lord which he hateth 
have they done unto their gods; for even their sons 
and their daughters have they burnt in the fire to their 
gods." No fact could be more telling ; none more damn- 
ing. A people so given up to devil-worship as to burn 
their own offspring at his supposed behest, must be too 
debased and corrupt to live! The earth itself cries out 
against them, demanding their utter extirpation ! 

A more full description of the varieties and forms of 
the devil-worship and fellowship common among the 
Canaanites may be seen in Deut. 18 : 9-14, to which it 
must suffice to refer the reader. 

I am well aware that some Jewish doctors, wishing 
to vindicate their fathers from crimes so unnatural have 
sought to prove that " causing children to pass through 



266 THE THEOCRACY. 

the fire " was a rite of purification and not actual mur- 
der. The attempt is futile : (1.) Because some of 

the expressions are perfectly unequivocal ; e. g. — " Even 
their sons have they burnt in the fire to their Gods " 
(Deut. 12 : 31). See also the cases in 2 Kings 17 : 31, 

and 2 Chron. 28 : 3, and Jer. 7 : 31, and 19 : 5. 

(2.) The phrase — "To make to pass through the fire 
unto their gods" is used in the same sense as the phrase — 

" to burn in the fire." (3.) That the Phenicians and 

Carthagenians, closely related to the ancient Canaanites, 
did offer human sacrifices is a well established fact of 
history. (See Smith's Bible Dictionary ; " Moloch.") 

We have seen that the title of Israel to Canaan falls 
back upon God's prior title — upon his right to deed it 
to whom he would. On the same principle the question 
whether it was right and just for them to extirpate the 
Canaanites falls back upon two prior questions — 
(a.) Was it right and just for God to extirpate them ? 

(b.) Was it wise for Him to command the Israelites 

to do this work of extirpation, rather than do it himself 
by miracle, and without human hands ? Here are our 
two great questions. 

(a.) 'As to the first — the right of God to destroy them 
for their crimes and the justice of doing it — I see not how 
it can be denied or questioned without denying to God 
the right to punish sin at all. Has God any right to 
govern his own universe — any right to resist the influ- 
ence of sin and rebellion in his kingdom — any right to 
protect innocent children from being burned to death 
in homage to the devil ? Alas for the universe if this doc- 
trine can be maintained ! Truly we may say — If God 

has no right to exterminate from the earth any one in- 
dividual sinner, or a nation of many thousands who are 
too corrupt to live, then he lacks the essential rights of 
a God ! If he has not the power to do it, he lacks the 
power necessary to a God. If he has not the firmness — 
the nerve (shall we say?) — the sense of justice and right 
that would forbid his evading the duty, then he lacks 
the essential attributes of a God. If he has so little love 
for his offspring that he can see their welfare sacrificed 
in the worship of the devil and in the sweep of un- 
utterable social pollutions, then he is incompetent to 
govern a world of sinners ! 



THE WAR-LAW AGAINST CANAANITES. 267 

(b.) But the objector will make his chief stand upon 
the secondary question — Was it wise for God to employ 
Israel to extirpate the corrupt Canaanites ? 

The objector will perhaps say — He might have sunk 
all Canaan under a second flood like that of Noah's time, 
and no complaint could stand against him. He might 
have engulfed those cities in fire as he did guilty Sodom, 
and all the living, cognizant of the moral grounds of 
the act, would have said, Amen ! But that he should 
set such an example of war — the most horrid of all 
wars — before the nations of all history — before the ages 
of all time, giving it his holy sanction — nay more, set- 
ting his own most holy people to the bloody work — this 
is unpardonable. That he should put them to such 
barbarities— subject them to such demoralization of all 
the finer sensibilities of the human soul, seems too hor- 
rid to be thought of ! 

It is perhaps well to meet this question in its strong- 
est form, with its objectionable points in their most 
revolting aspect. 

I do not feel called upon to say one word to soften 
down any man's sense of the horrors of war. War is 
horrid — but sin is more horrid — certainly such sin as 
that of the old Canaanites. In fact war is horrid — not 
mainly because of the suffering but because of the sin 
that may be in it. And this suggests the true and just 
reply to be made to the objection now before us, viz. 
that such a war as that of Israel against the Canaanites, 
waged in obedience to God ; waged for the destruction 
of such sinners and to cleanse the earth from such un- 
utterable abominations and pollutions, is not demoral- 
izing — is not so either necessarily or even naturally; 
but if done in honest obedience to God and with a due 
sense of the grounds on which God commanded it, must 
have been the very opposite of demoralizing ; must have 
educated the nation of Israel to a juster sense of the 
abominations of idolatry and of the righteous moral 
government of God over the wicked in the present world. 
It can not be doubted that these were the ends which 
God sought to secure in putting this service upon Israel. 
A lower object to be reached was to vacate the land of 
Canaan for Israel to occupy; but the far higher object 
was to wash the land of its moral pollutions ; to break 
down and blot out nations too corrupt to live. The Lord 



268 THE THEOCRACY. 

devolved this extirpation, upon Israel that they might 
thereby get a deeper sense of his abhorrence of such 
sin — not to say also, a juster view of the intrinsic abom- 
inations which God commissioned them to punish. 

Or we may put the argument thus : Given — the great 
historic fact, the moral corruption of the nations of 
Canaan and the moral purpose of God to exterminate 
those nations for their corruption. The choice of meth- 
ods lies between miracles on the one hand, and the war- 
force of Israel, backed up by God's providential agencies, 
on the other : — miracles as in the flood and on Sodom : 
or the war-commission given to his people Israel. 

Now consider. 1. Miracles had already been em- 
ployed repeatedly before the eyes of mankind, and the 
Lord might for this reason wisely vary his methods, for 
the greater and better effect. 

2. As already argued, the moral effect upon Israel of 
being made the executioners of God's righteous justice 
may be presumed to have been naturally wholesome. 
But not to push this argument — we may at least main- 
tain, 

3. That seen historically — estimated in the light of 
the facts of the case, this method was morally impressive, 
instructive, elevating, wholesome. Recur to the first war — 
that against Amalek ; and to the scope it gave for illus- 
trations of prayer, and to the sense it inspired of their 
relations to their covenant God. Turn to the record of 
the war against Moab and Midian (Num. 25 and 31). 
Mark its powerful protest against the lewdness involved 
in those forms of idol-worship, and note how Phin- 
eas arose to the sublime grandeur of the emergency and 
made a record for himself and for his whole tribe indeed 
in the history of the nation (Num. 25 : 11-13 and Mai. 
2 : 4-7). Study the wars of Joshua and the moral hero- 
ism developed there, and ask if any generation of Israel 
appear on the page of her national history, exhibiting 
a truer consecration to God or a more conscientious de- 
votion to his will. And what shall we say of Deborah 
and Barak, and of the heroism that shines and gleams 
in the record of their achievements, or of the piety that 
flavors their triumphal song ? The same may be said 
of the wars under David, Jehoshaphat, and Hezekiah, and 
of the songs of praise and of proud triumph in Israel's 
God which gave expression to the moral results of those 



THE WAR-LAW AGAINST CANAANITES. 269 

wars and victories. That man reads the history of the 
heroic age of Israel very imperfectly who does not see 
in it ample demonstration that staunch obedience to 
God in this matter of war against the idolatrous, cor- 
rupt Canaanites, fostered piety, developed Christian 
heroism and toned up the standard of morality. When 
they compromised, accepted tribute, and tried their own 
policy of living side by side with such idolaters instead 
of God's policy of vigorous extermination, then came 
disaster, religious decline, and most perilous moral cor- 
ruption. 

4. The great conflict of those early ages between God 
and Satan was fought on the point of idolatry — the real 
question being whether God or the devil should have 
the worship of men ; whether the supremacy and the 
moral right to rule the world are with God or with 
Satan. This being the great conflict of the ages, it 
should not surprise us that God should let Israel's land 
of promise be in a sort the battle-ground, and should 
bring into play the physical force of arms and let his 
covenant people come into the fight hand to hand 
against the hosts of his foes. This arrangement gave 
scope for his own hand in various providential agencies — 
thunder, hail-storm, the day prolonged miraculously ; 
panics often smiting the hearts of his enemies, and 
victories that witnessed visibly to Jehovah's present 
hand. In an age when men were waiting for God to 
manifest himself visibly and tangibly • when their spir- 
itual perceptions were but dim, and when of necessity 
the first step in the process of revealing God to men 
demanded an appeal to the senses, it was certainly no 
mistake in wisdom for God to suffer this great fight to 
take on visible form and stand out palpably before hu- 
man eyes. In the result God made it unmistakably 
manifest that his soul abhorred such unnatural and 
horrid crimes as those of the men of Canaan, and also 
that he had both the power and the will to inflict on 
them the extremest and most fearful judgments. 



CHAPTER XVII. 



THE CIVIL INSTITUTES OF MOSES; OR THE HEBREW 
CODE OF CIVIL LAW. 

In scripture phrase, the code is most often called 
"The statutes and the judgments" — the "command- 
ments and precepts" which the Lord gave by Moses 
(Deut. 6 : 1 and Ex. 21 : 1). , 

I approach this subject with a feeling of regret that 
the necessary limits of this volume forbid any attempt 
to make my presentation of this topic exhaustive. 
The utmost I can do within the limits prescribed is to 
give an outline rather than a full development of this 
code. I shall aim to make this outline full enough to 
show the steps and stages of progress in the science of 
legislation which are obvious in these "statutes and 
judgments." 

I must first call attention to certain points of a gen- 
eral nature, most of which will need only a brief state- 
ment. 

1. This code of laws was given to the Hebrews by God 
himself, through the hand of Moses. For the sake of brev- 
ity and to distinguish it from other codes we may speak 
of it as the code of Moses and may speak of Moses as the 
Hebrew lawgiver ; yet let it be said once for all that we 
recognize no authority — no authorship other than that 
of God himself. 

2. This code was built upon the moral law of Sinai — 
the ten commandments. It simply expands and ap- 
plies the general principles expressed or implied in 
that summary. 

3. It was framed with the purpose of reaching the 
highest moral standard practicable in the circumstances 
of the people — the highest which it was possible to en- 
force. This doctrine assumes that any special statute 
which is so far above the moral status of the people as 
to be practically inoperative and void may be for this 
very reason an evil rather than a good inasmuch as it 
may break down rather than build up the law-abiding 

(270) 



THE HEBREW CIVIL CODE. 271 

spirit of the people. Consequently the best statute for 
any given people may be the best that can be in the 
main enforced — the best which they can be brought up 
to respect and obey. Hence it may happen that some 
of the statutes in the best practicable system will be 
only second best — i. e. not theoretically perfect, but 
only the best practically for the circumstances. We 
may illustrate this by the law of divorce, as to which 
Jesus himself remarks that Moses " because of the hard- 
ness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives, 
but from the beginning it was not so" (Mat. 19: 8). 
The provisions for an easy divorce were a concession to 
a sadly low morality among the people — the best under 
the circumstances — the best that could be made oper- 
ative with that people, but by no means theoretically 

perfect. The reader will take note that we had no 

occasion to apply this principle to the moral law r of the 
ten commandments, nor indeed to the underlying prin- 
ciples of this code of "statutes and judgments," but 
only to some of its practical applications of these prin- 
ciples. 

4. It is an inference from our last-named point that 
this code must needs take the people as they were; must 
have regard to existing usages, to the common law un- 
der which they had been living, and perhaps must be 
compelled to tolerate some undesirable usages until 
better principles could be inculcated and a higher 
moral tone of public sentiment could be established. 
Illustrations of this principle appear in the prevalent 
system of servitude, and in polygamy. 

5. Another inference from the point above made is 
that this code can not be held responsible for what was 
in existence before its promulgation; e. g. personal 
slavery. It can be held responsible only for doing the 
best that could be done with such a people — a people so 
educated, accustomed to such usages and trained in such 
ideas. 

6. That this code, though given by the Lord himself, 
was not theoretically perfect but only the best practica- 
ble, is obvious from the fact that it was from time to 
time modified. Cases of this appear in the law respect- 
ing the six years' emancipation of Hebrew servants 
(compare Ex. 21: 2-7 with Deut. 15: 12-17); the 
taking of pledges from the poor for the payment of 



272 THE HEBREW CIVIL CODE. 

debts: (compare Ex. 22: 26 with Deut. 24: 6, 10-15). 
See also the law of inheritance in a family consisting 
of daughters only (Num. 36). 

7. That this code was framed with the design of a 
special adaptation to the Hebrew people appears in 
such facts as these, viz. that though it went into imme- 
diate effect and continued in force during their wander- 
ing life in the wilderness forty years, yet it anticipated 
their ultimate residence in Canaan, especially in its 
land-law and its provision for the entailment of real 
estate. Also it anticipated the future demand for a 
king according to the usage of contiguous nations and 
provided for this modification in the general gov- 
ernment. 

8. At the point where the administration of justice 
first appears, the sole responsibility seems to have 
rested on Moses (Ex. 18). At the suggestion of Jethro 
(as we have seen) important modifications were intro- 
duced. Further modifications were made after the set- 
tlement in Canaan. In consequence of the close con- 
nection between the church and the state— the religious 
law and the civil — the same class of men were to a 
great extent put in charge of both. The tribe of Levi 
becamte the ministers of religion and the administrators 
of civil law as well. Exempted chiefly from agricul- 
ture and from military service, they became the learned 
class — the lawyers of the nation. "The priests' lips 
should keep knowledge and they should seek the law 
at his mouth" (Malachi 2: 7). 

9. The question how far this divinely revealed code 
of law is authoritative upon human legislators and 
should control legislation in this Christian age, should 
be carefully considered. With no attempt to exhaust 
this question, I may suggest briefly:— (1.) That the 
great principles of this code should underlie every code 
of human law. These principles must be good for all 
time — for man in his social and civil relations every- 
where. For example, its doctrine of equity ; its law of 
love ; its regard for the personal rights of life, chastity, 
property ; its doctrine of the essential equality of every 
man's rights before the law ; and its assumption that 
the poor, being otherwise defenseless, have special need 
of the protection of law, and should be regarded there- 
fore as the special wards of government and its of- 



THE HEBREW CIVIL CODE. 273 

ficers. (2.) As the moral law of the ten command- 
ments is obviously the compend and summary of the 
great principles which underlie this Hebrew code, so 
should this moral law be the compend and summary 
of the principles that should underlie every human 
code of law in whatever age of the world and in what- 
ever stages of civilization. (3.) As the Hebrew code 

while accepting the supreme authority of the ten com- 
mandments and aiming to embody and apply its prin- 
ciples did yet allow to itself a certain latitude in ad- 
justing its " precepts and statutes " to the condition of 
the people, so may human legislators. Lessons of wis- 
dom may be drawn from this code in both these lines 
of its example ; viz. its fidelity to the principles and 
doctrines of the perfect moral law of Sinai ; and its care- 
ful adaptation of these principles to the actual status 
of the people so as to reach the highest possible amount 
of practical efficiency in securing the ends of justice 
and of virtue. 

The brief analysis and treatment of the civil code here 
attempted will follow mainly the same order of subjects 
which appears in the law of Sinai ; thus : 

I. Crimes against God : 

1. Idolatry; — 2. Perjury; — 3. Presumptuous sins ;— 4. 
Violations of the Sabbath ; — 5. Blasphemy ; — 6. Magic. 

II. Crimes against parents and rulers (Fifth command- 
ment). 

III. Crimes against the person and life (Sixth com- 
mandment). 

IV. Crimes against chastity (Seventh commandment). 

V. Crimes against property ; laws respecting property 
(Eighth commandment). 

VI. Crimes against reputation; violations of truth 
(Ninth commandment). 

VII. Hebrew servitude. 

VIII. Judicial procedure. 

IX. Punishments. 

I. Crimes against God : 

1. Idolatry, The laws against idolatry included both 
the professed worship of the true God by means of images, 
and the worship of other gods. As the law of Sinai for- 



274 CRIMES AGAINST GOD. 

bade both these practices with no special discrimination 
between them, so did the "statutes and judgments" — the 
law apparently holding it of small account to attempt any 
discrimination. In the case of the golden calf (Ex. 32) 
Aaron having more knowledge of the true God than the 
body of the people, may have thought only of worship- 
ing the Lord (" To-morrow is a feast to the Lord ") ; but 
the people bringing their notions from their Egyptian 
life, may have had no thought beyond the calf, and so 
may have worshiped it as their God. Plainly the pro- 
fessed worship of God by means of images was a per- 
petual temptation to let slip all just conceptions of God 
and to worship images only, or some other object than 
God. No discrimination in point of penalty appears 
in the law. Both forms seem to have been condemned 
and punished with no attempt to discriminate between 
them. Individual idolaters, after careful examination 
and clear proof of guilt, were stoned — the witnesses 
casting the first stone (Deut. 17 : 2-7). No man might 
allow himself to be seduced into the worship of other 
gods — no, not by a brother, or a son, or a wife, or by 
friend dear as his own soul, but must expose the sin 
of his .seducer and spare not his very life (Deut. 13: 
6-11). A city given to idolatry, if the case be proven, 
must be utterly destroyed and made a perpetual desola- 
tion (Deut. 13 : 12-16). The statutes were absolutely 
sweeping against any possible form of similitude, image, 
or representation, made for an object of worship; and 
also against the worship of the heavenly bodies — a form 
of idolatry both ancient and widely diffused (Deut. 4 : 

13-19). To guard them against temptation in the 

social line, they were forbidden to eat in idolatrous fes- 
tivals (Ex. 34 : 15). Apparently many special usages 
were forbidden because of their associations with idol 
worship (Lev. 19: 27, 28). The prohibition to eat 
blood or fat may have been in part sanitary, but prob- 
ably was also anti-idolatrous. The distinction between 
things clean and unclean helped to make them a pe- 
culiar people, and may have been so intended. 

2. Perjury. The law of Sinai tacitly indicates that 
the Lord himself would take the perjurer in hand, 
would never hold him guiltless, and would be responsi- 
ble for his punishment. The statutes touch only a 



PERJURY. 275 

single case — "A false witness rising up against any 
man to testify against him that which is wrong" — 
ordaining that the case be brought before the judges 
who are to make diligent inquisition. If found guilty, 
the evil he thought to bring upon another must be 

visited upon himself (Deut. 19 : 16-21). In general 

the sanctity of the sacred oath was shielded by Jehovah 
himself, searching out and punishing the guilty. 
Oaths seem to have been far less frequent than in the 
modern administration of law — less frequent, but more 
sacred, this binding force being laid on every con- 
science and left to the awful sanctions of Jehovah. 

3. Presumptuous sins. The law against such sins 
sought to impress due reverence for God's authority. A 
broad distinction was made between sins of ignorance 
and sins where knowledge of duty was presupposed 
and the offense involved deliberate contempt of God. 
The external act was of smallest consequence. The 
law said, " The soul that doeth aught presumptuously" — 
no matter what it be. Certain cases are specified hav- 
ing these common elements — that the law was plain ; 
the duty palpable ; and innocent ignorance not even 
supposable; — e. g. the law of the Sabbath against all 
[needless] work (Ex. 31 : 14, 15 and 35 : 2, 3). The 
case (Num. 15 : 32-36) of the man who gathered sticks 
on the Sabbath, stands in the closest connection with 
the law against " presumptuous sins," showing that 
the offense was seen in that light. The most emphatic 
condemnation of presumptuous sins immediately pre- 
cedes (vs. 30, 31) in these words : " The soul that doeth 
aught presumptuously, the same reproacheth the Lord ; 
and that soul shall be cut off from among his people" 
(*. e. by capital punishment). " Because he hath de- 
spised the word of the Lord and hath broken his com- 
mandment, that soul shall be utterly cut off; his 
iniquity shall be upon him." He must bear it him- 
self, with no atonement provided for his pardon. 

Other cases specified are — the eating of unleavened 
bread during the Passover (Ex 12 : 15) ; neglect of the 
Passover when its observance was practicable (Num. 
9 : 13) ; eating certain sacrificial offerings while un- 
clean (Lev. 7: 20, 21); eating fat or blood (Lev. 7 : 23-27). 

The reason for laws of this sort, apparently so strin- 



276 BLASPHEMY. 

gent and severe, lies in the facts — that God was their 
king ; that he looked on the heart ; and that whatever 
acts manifested contempt of his authority and treason 
against his throne were in their very nature the high- 
est possible crimes. 

4. Laws against violations of the Sabbath have been in- 
dicated sufficiently under the previous head. The 
statute was so entirely definite; the line of duty so 
easily defined and understood, it seemed to be assumed 
that palpable violations of the Sabbath were presump- 
tuous sins, and they are treated accordingly. The case 
of the man who gathered sticks w r as carried up to the 
Supreme King, apparently because though the law was 
clear, the external act was in itself trivial. God's an- 
swer amounted to this ; No offense can be trivial if the 
spirit of it contemns God's authority and reproaches his 
name. 

5. Blasphemy. A case of blasphemy is specially de- 
scribed (Lev. 24: 10-16, 23). It was referred to God, 
the Supreme Ruler. " They put him in ward that the 
mind of the Lord might he showed them." The Lord 
replied through Moses: "Bring forth him that hath 
cursed without the camp; and let all that heard him 
lay their hand upon his head, and let all the congrega- 
tion stone him." The law was enacted accordingly: 
"He that blasphemeth the name of the Lord shall 
surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall 
certainly stone him." The majesty of the Great King — 
the infinitely holy God, must be held sacred. No pun- 
ishment could be too severe for a crime which struck 
so fatally against the reverence and homage due to Je- 
hovah. 

6. Magic Arts. In examining the statutes on this 
point, we are struck with the number and variety of 
names which designate these arts. The standard enu- 
meration (Deut. 18: 10, 11) gives at least eight; viz. 

(1.) "He that useth divination" — professing to gain 
knowledge and power more than human and in some 
sense divine : (2.) "An observer of times " — the He- 
brew word being related to cloud, perhaps in the sense 
of covering, hiding, as the cloud shuts off* the sun's 



MAGIC ARTS. 277 

light ; practicing covert arts : (3.) "An enchanter " — 

the original suggesting the serpent, and implying 
either a hissing, in imitation of the serpent; or the 
practice of charming serpents, yet always connected 

with the arts of divination: (4.) "A witch" — the 

Hebrew word signifying one w T ho mutters incantations, 
its cognate words having the sense of praying, but in 
Hebrew only in the bad sense of seeking help from 

others than God: (5.) "The charmer" — a word 

which suggests binding as with the spell of enchant- 
ment — " spell-bound " ; often used of the charming of 

serpents: (6.) "A consulter with familiar spirits"; 

(Heb.) one who prays to the bottle-man— the Hebrew 
word for bottle being applied to the ventriloquist from 
whose body came forth unearthly sounds as from a sec- 
ond being imprisoned within him. Ventriloquism 
w r as one of the arts practiced by the ancient magicians 
to excite the wonder and to command the belief of the 

credulous. The English phrase — "familiar spirit" — 

signifies spirits who stand in such a relation to the 
performer that they come at his call, like servants of his 
family, he having the power to evoke them at his will. 
Of course it is pretended that these spirits are other 
than human and greater than human spirits can be 
while yet in the body. The original Hebrew [Ob] 
comes down to us in the African " Obe-man " who still 

follows the same profession, by means of similar arts. 

(7.) "The wizard" is one who claims superhuman wis- 
dom — the old English accurately translating the He- 
brew : the distinctively icise one. Of course the word is 
restricted in usage to this sort of superior wisdom — that 

w T hich is gained by the arts of magic. (8.) "The 

necromancer " — precisely the spiritist of modern times — 
or rather, of all time — who claims to have communion 
with the spirits of dead men.* 

I have led the reader through this analysis of the 
original words, to aid him toward some just conception 
of the associated ideas which cluster round the magic 
arts of the Hebrew age. Their name and their arts are 
legion. Think of so many classes — professions — of men 
and women naturally shrewd, sharp, cunning; prac- 

*The word necromancer comes from the Greek; necros — a dead 
one; and " mantis " divination — gaining superhuman knowledge 
from the dead. 



278 MAGIC ARTS. 

ticing upon the superstitions, the fears, the gullibility 
of the millions; gaining an almost unlimited control 
over them ; working upon their imagination, haunting 
them with the dread of unknown powers, bringing up 
to them ghosts from the invisible world, claiming to 
give auguries of the future, playing in every way that 
may be for their own selfish interests upon their fears 
and their hopes to extort their money or to make sport 
of their fears, or to gratify their own or others' malice. 
Or go still deeper and see all this machinery subsidized 
by the devil to impress men with his supremacy, to ex- 
tort their homage, or at least their fear of himself; and 
perhaps, most of all, to turn them utterly away from 
the true God and to displace him from his proper 
sphere as the supreme hope and joy and trust of mor- 
tals. It will always be an unsettled question— How 

much help in the line of superhuman knowledge and 
power does Satan give to his servants who work the in- 
fernal machinery of magic arts ? But on the point of 
his interest and sympathy in these arts, there need not 
be the least question whatever. A system so near akin 
in spirit and influence to idolatry — which so thor- 
oughly displaces God from the hopes and fears of men, 
and which seeks so successfully to instal these horrible 
superstitions in his place; — a system which perverts 
the powers of the world to come to subserve ungodli- 
ness and which practically rules out the Blessed God 
from the sphere of men's homage, fears, and hopes ; — 
this system has always been worked by wicked and 
never by good men — has always subserved all iniquity, 
but piety and morality never ; — this has been a master 
stroke of Satan's policy and one of the most palpable 

fields of his triumph through all the ages. Let it not 

surprise us that God's law given through Moses de- 
nounced it unqualifiedly and made it punishable with 
death. 

The nations whom God drove out of Canaan were 
steeped in its abominations and ripened under its influ- 
ence for their righteous doom. 1 am not aware that 

even one pagan, idolatrous nation, known to history 
since the world began, has been free from this abomina- 
tion — the arts of magic. Egypt, Canaan, Babylon, 
India, Africa, historic Greece and Rome; the old na- 
tions of Northern Europe, the savages of America — all 



CRIMES AGAINST PARENTS AND RULERS. 279 

come up to testify that they have been cursed by its 
presence and power. The latest edition, modified 
slightly to adjust it somewhat to an age of Christian 
civilization, is the " spiritism " of our day — of which I 
need at this point to say but two things : — (1.) That 
its principles and policy, its spirit and its influence, 
are essentially the old "necromancy" of the ages of all 
history: and (2.) That it naturally becomes the nu- 
cleus around which chrystallizes whatever elements in 
society are irreligious and unchristian. This last re- 
mark would not deny that some are attracted toward it 
temporarily by curiosity ; but it would maintain that 
the animus, the soul of the system, is congenial to 
those who know not God, and who choose not to know 
him ; — who therefore gladly seek a substitute for God, 
for his Bible, for prayer, and for trust in his provi- 
dence in these new revelations from the future, unseen 
world. 

Passages in the Old Testament treating of this sub- 
ject are Ex. 22: 18 and Lev. 19: 26, 31, and 20: 6, 27, 
and Deut. 18: 10, 11, 14, and 1 Sam. 28: 7-20, and 1 
Chron. 10: 13, 14, and 2 Kings 21 : 6, and 2 Chron. 33: 
6, andlsa. 8: 19,20. 

II. Crimes against Parents and Rulers; (Violations of the 
Fifth Command). 

Of crimes against parents, the statutes of Moses spec- 
ify smiting and cursing (E3x. 21 : 15, 17) ; the penalty 
in both cases, death. The precept forbidding to curse 
a parent is repeated impressively (Lev. 20: 9); "For 
every one that curseth father or mother shall be surely 
put to death : he hath cursed his father or his mother ; 
his blood shall be upon him." This crime stands in 
the list of those that are anathematized — in Deut. 27 : 
16 : " Cursed be he that setteth light by his father or 

his mother ; and all the people shall say, Amen." In 

Mat. 15 : 3-6 and Mk. 7 : 9-13, our Lord seems to give 
this law forbidding a son to curse father or mother, 
coupled with the fifth command, a construction broad 
enough to require him to give them an adequate sup- 
port—of course in their years of infirmity and want. 

That God had a high regard for this filial duty toward 
parents is manifest in the place of priority accorded to 
13 



280 CRIMES AGAINST PERSON AND LIFE. 

the fifth command and in the special promise made to 
those who fulfill its obligations. 

In Deut. 21 : 18-21, the case is supposed of a son in- 
curably stubborn, rebellious, gluttonous, and drunken, 
upon whom parental chastisement is unavailing. The 
law very considerately provides that his father and his 
mother shall lay hold of him and bring him before the 
elders of his city unto its gates (i. e. into open court), 
and there, as a public example and warning, the men 
of his city shall stone him with stones that he die : — 
" So shalt thou put evil away from you and all Israel 

shall hear and fear." Parental love and partiality 

would guaranty this law against abuse. It is pleasant 
to note that no case of its execution is on record. Per- 
haps the severity of the law forestalled its violation. 

The spirit of this precept is so fully in harmony with 

the book of Proverbs that we naturally expect to find 
it there. (See Prov. 20 : 20 and 30 : 11, 17.) 

A precept forbidding insult and reproach of magis- 
trates stands in Ex. 22 : 28 : "Thou shalt not revile the 
gods [Elohim used probably in the sense of judges], nor 
curse the ruler of thy people." The word " gods " here 
can not refer to false gods, idols (as the English reader 
might suppose), for the Hebrew word can not bear that 
sense, nor would it be pertinent. The parallelism with 
" ruler of thy people " favors the sense above suggested — 
judges — acting under God and in his behalf before the 
people. Their sacred office under God is assumed to be 
good reason for treating them with respect and against 

offering them insult. No penalty is attached to the 

violation of this law — perhaps because the penalty ought 
to depend so much upon the aggravation of the offense. 
— — Under the kings, it was apparently a capital crime, 
for when Shimei cursed king David (2 Sam. 19 : 21-23) 
Abishai assumed that he ought to die ; and his tempo- 
rary pardon was manifestly due to David's sad con- 
sciousness of deep personal ill-desert and of God's 
righteous visitations upon him. 

III. Crimes against Person and Life ; (Violations of the 
Sixth Command). 

Under this head the salient and vital points are : 
1. That the real murderer must be put to death, and no 
" satisfaction " be ever taken in place of his life. 



CRIMES AGAINST PERSON AND LIFE. 281 

2. That the law discriminated with the utmost care 
and wisdom between real murder, and homicide, more 
or less justifiable. [Special laws touching injuries done 
to servants will be treated under the head of Hebrew 
servitude.] 

3. A special law provided cities of refuge. 

4. Another special law met the case of murder by 
unknown hands. 

5. Inexcusable carelessness causing injury or death 
was punished. 

6. Personal injuries not fatal were specially punished 
by statute. 

"l. Real murder was punished capitally. a He that 
smiteth a man so that he die shall be surely put to 
death " (Ex. 21 : 12 and Lev. 24 : 17). The law appears 
fully in Num. 35: 9-34 and Deut. 19: 4-13, 20, 21, in 
connection with provisions for the cities of refuge. 
With firm and solemn tone the law declared "Ye shall 
take no satisfaction for the life of a murderer who is 
guilty of death, but he shall be surely put to death. 
So shall ye not pollute the land wherein ye are; 
for blood it defileth the land, and the land can 
not be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein 
but by the blood of him that shed it. Defile not 
therefore the land which ye shall inhabit wherein 
I dwell, for I the Lord dwell among the children of 
Israel" (Num. 35: 31-34). This reaffirms and am- 
plifies the doctrine of the law as given to Noah and to 
the repeopled world; "And surely your blood of your 
lives [life-blood] will I require ; at the hand of every 
beast will I require it, and at the hand of every man; at 
the hand of every man's brother [such a case as that of 
Cain and Abel] will I require the life of man. Whoso 
" [with no exception] sheddeth man's blood, by man 
shall his blood be shed ; for in the image of God made he 
man^ Human life is sacred, and God protects it under 
the sternest possible penalties — nothing less than the 
life of the murderer. That God intended this law for 
the whole race ) for the entire repeopled world from and after 
Noah, is too plain to be denied or even doubted. It is 
not easy to see how another word could be said to make 
this more plain. The law of Sinai and the code given 
through Moses are intensely emphatic, indeed, perfectly 
decisive. 



282 CRIMES AGAINST PERSON AND LIFE. 

The law does not prescribe the mode of this capital 
punishment. In various other crimes punishable with 
death, the mode is by stoning, done, however, not by 
any one executioner, but by many; in some cases by 
" the men of the city." The penalty for murder would 
often be executed by the blood-avenger — the nearest re- 
lative of the murdered man ; and it seems to be assumed 
that he would use any deadly weapon he might choose 
(Num. 35: 19, 21, 27 and Deut. 19: 6, 11-13). 

2. The law discriminated with the utmost care and 
wisdom between real murder, and homicide, more or 
less justifiable. Real murder was to be proven as fol- 
lows : 

(1.) By previous hatred and enmity. Of course this 
could be known by human judges only by its manifest- 
ations. 

(2.) By violent passion in the act — which I take to 
be the sense of the words in our translation : " If a 
man come presumptuously upon his neighbor ; [in Heb.] 
if a man boil up with rage against his neighbor to slay 
him with guile," etc. (Ex. 21 : 14). 

(3.) By evidence of premeditation — -" lying in wait " 
(Ex. 21 : 13, and Num. 35 : 15-23, and Deut. 19: 4-6). 

(4.) By the sort of instrument used (Num. 35: 16-18). 
" An instrument of iron ;" " a stone f " a hand-weapon 
of wood," L e. wood of the hand, large enough to fill the 
hand and deal a death-blow. 

On the other hand it would be in favor of homicide 
if one had killed his neighbor " ignorantly" — " whom 
he had not hated in time past;" or thrust upon him 
suddenly without enmity; without lying in wait; or 
cast upon him a stone seeing him not, nor seeking his 
harm, etc. (Num. 35 : 22, 23 and Deut. 19 : 4-6). A case 
for example is given — the head of a man's ax flying off 
when he is at work and killing his neighbor. 

3. A special law provided for cities of refuge. (See Ex. 

21 : 13 and Num. 35, and Deut. 19 and Josh. 20). At 

the era of Moses it was already a time-honored usage 
that the nearest blood-relative should avenge the blood 
of his slain friend. The prevalence and strength of 
this sentiment were due of course, primarily, to the 
instincts of human nature ; but secondarily to the fact 
that as an institution for the protection of person and 
life, the family was prior to the states The Goel [as 



CRIMES AGAINST PERSON AND LIFE. 283 

he was called in Hebrew] — the blood-avenger or Re- 
deemer, could not be expected to exercise cool and im- 
partial discrimination over the questions lying between 
murder in the first degree and homicide. To obviate 
this evil the Lord introduced an important modification 
upon the previously current usages of blood-revenge. 
It was this. Six cities in Palestine — three on each side 
of the Jordan were selected in such convenient geo- 
graphical position that from any point of the whole 
country the man-slayer might make the nearest one 

within less than one day's run. All these were cities 

of the Levites ; hence the leading men of the city would 
be competent to hold a preliminary investigation. The 
man-slayer fled for his life to the nearest of these cities. 
The legal authorities there protected him against the 
Goel — the blood-avenger. The elders of his own city, 
if the case seemed to demand it, might send and fetch 
him ; try him, and deliver him up to the blood-avenger ; 
or remand him back to his city of refuge. Thus this 
city shielded him against sudden and indiscriminate 
vengeance, and secured for him a trial before the con- 
gregation or elders of his own city. If his case was 
proved to be homicide, he must remain within the city 
of refuge till the death of the high priest, after which 
the avenger's right to take his life (outside the refuge- 
city) ceased and he could go at large in safety. This 
provision affixed a limit to his quasi-imprisonment. 
Perhaps it was also significant of the pardon for sin 

provided for in the death of our Great High Priest. 

If the man-slayer allowed himself to be caught by the 
blood-avenger outside his city when he should be within 
it, the avenger might take his life with impunity. 

The law was specific on the point that human life 
must not be taken on the testimony of one witness 
only — a plurality of witnesses being required (Num. 35 : 

30, and Deut. 17: 6, and 19: 15). It was no crime 

before the law to kill a thief breaking into a house by 
night (Ex. 22 : 2, 3). After sunrise, it became a crime 
of blood to take his life — it being assumed that he 
might be caught and compelled to make restitution, 
and that the peril to your own life and that of your 
family is materially lessened. The law carefully 
guarded the defenseless hours of sleep by night. If a 
thief in defiance of this law played the burglar by 



284 CRIME3 AGAINST PERSON AND LIFE. 

night, he must run his own risk of death in the at- 
tempt. 

4. A very remarkable statute met the special case of 
a murder done by unknown hands (Deut. 21 : 1-9). 
The authorities from all contiguous cities took up the 
case; measured carefully to fix upon the city lying 
nearest to the bloody spot. Then the elders of that city 
were to take a heifer never worked in yoke ; bring her 
down into a wild, uncultivated valley — the home of all 
weird and thrilling associations — and there strike off 
the heifer's head — the priests coming near and all the 
elders of that city washing their hands over the head- 
less heifer, solemnly protesting — " Our hands have not 
shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it. Be mer- 
ciful, O Lord, unto thy people Israel, and lay not inno- 
cent blood unto thy people Israel's charge." " And the 
blood shall be forgiven them. So shalt thou put away 
the guilt of innocent blood from among you when thou 
shalt do that which is right in the sight of the Lord." 

The entire scene was well adapted to make the 

impression that murder is no trifle, and that God held 
the whole people responsible to some extent for the 
safety of every human life. 

5. Inexcusable carelessness, followed by fatal results, was 
punishable by law. A supposed case for a specimen 
appears in Ex. 21 : 28, 29. The goring ox — wont to 
push with his horns— reported to his owner but not 
"kept in" by him — killing man or woman — must be 
put to death and his owner also, for his culpable negli- 
gence. 

6. Personal injuries, not fatal, came under special 
statute. In the case of a mutual quarrel and fight, 
personal injuries, less than fatal, were punished by re- 
quiring their author to pay for the wounded man's loss 
of time and for his being " thoroughly healed " [nursing 

and medical services]. The master who smote his 

servant unto immediate death, must surely be pun- 
ished. But if the servant survived a day or two, the 
presumption would be that the master did not intend 
to kill. His loss in the services of his servant was con- 
sidered his punishment. Other special cases appear 

Ex. 21 : 22 and Deut. 25 : 11, 12 which were better read 
than rehearsed. The principle of punishment by re- 
taliation — [" lex talionis "] — like for like — was applied 






CRIMES AGAINST CHASTITY. 285 

in all appropriate cases (Lev. 24: 18-21). "If a man 
cause a blemish in his neighbor, as he hath done, so 
shall it be done unto him : Breach for breach ; eye for 
eye/' etc. (Ex. 21 : 23-25 and Deut. 19 : 21). 

IV. Crimes Against Chastity; (Violations of the Seventh 
Command). 

The necessity for laws on this point at once discrim- 
inating, wise, and stringent, will be sufficiently obvi- 
ous when we consider (1.) The strength of the passion 
to be controlled — constitutionally common to all ages 

of the world : (2.) The sacredness of the marriage 

relation and the inestimable value of moral purity in 
all human society — also common to all ages of the 

world's history: (3.) (Peculiar to the earlier ages) 

the necessity of defining the limits of consanguinity 
within which marriage should be prohibited, and all 
sexual connection sternly forbidden. Perhaps we need 
to remind ourselves that the race having sprung from 
a single pair and the world having been repeopled a 
second time from one family, those primitive examples 
may have sent down for many generations a certain 
looseness which called for special restraint and a care- 
fully defining law : (4.) The crimes of Sodom, their 

polluting influence in so good a family as that of Lot ; 
the low morals of Egyptian life ; some sad manifesta- 
tions in the early history of Jacob's family; the horri- 
ble contagion of Moab and Midian when the tribes of 
Israel came socially near them; — these and kindred 
facts will be readily recalled as in point to show the 
necessity of vigorous legislation in the Mosaic code to 
counteract these untoward influences of their ante- 
cedent life and of surrounding society. The thought- 
ful student of the Mosaic code as expanding and apply- 
ing the seventh commandment will be painfully im- 
pressed with the disadvantages under which it labored 
by reason of the toleration of polygamy, concubinage, 
and domestic servitude. In some points the law bore 
with special severity upon woman as compared with 
man — a sort of imperfection which was simply an in- 
evitable result of tolerating those ancient evils. It 

scarcely need be suggested that the value of this part 
of the Mosaic code as a definite model for Christian leg- 



286 LAWS ON RIGHTS OF PROPERTY. 

islation is greatly lessened by this class of facts. Wo- 
man's place in society then was by no means that 
which the genius of Christianity has given her. Un- 
questionably this code alleviated her condition as com- 
pared with what it had been, and brought to her relief 
as large a boon of blessing as the genius of the age 
would bear. 

In view, partly of the difficulty of treating this sub- 
ject with minute detail in a way to make its discus- 
sion really useful, and partly of its inferior value in 
some points as an example, for reasons above indicated, 
I shall excuse myself from any minute and extended 
presentation of these laws. 

In general : The laws accord ample space to the con- 
demnation of the unnatural crimes of sodomy and 
bestiality (Lev. 18 and 20, and Deut. 23 : 17, 18, and 
27 : 21) : also to incest, which for historic reasons 
needed to be thoroughly and stringently defined (Lev. 
18 and 19 and 20) : to adultery proper; to the case of a 
suspected wife (Num. 5: 11-31); — to seduction and 
rape ; to aggravated whoredom in the form of public 
prostitution ; of prostitution to an idol ; of impurity in 

a priest's daughter ; in a woman betrothed, etc., etc. 

The study of these laws would impress pure-minded 
readers with a sense of the great pains taken to lift up 
and regenerate a sadly low and debased condition of 
social morals on these points; and also with a sense of 
special difficulty arising from the fact that society was 
quite too low to bear the introduction and enforcement 
of the Christian law of marriage as against concu- 
binage, polygamy, and the debasement inseparable 
from even modified slavery. We shall rise from the 
careful study of this department of the Hebrew code 
with gratitude for the wisdom and goodness which at- 
tempted so much, yet with a deeper gratitude that a 
purer and higher code came to mankind through the 
law of Christ and the spirit of an enlightened Chris- 
tian age. 

V. Statutes Protecting Rights of Property; (Expanding the 
Eighth Command). 

In Ex. 22: 1-15, 25-28, and 23: 4, 5, we have the 
earliest instalment of statutes on this point. The 



LAWS ON RIGHTS OF PROPERTY. 287 

staple penalty for theft was restitution, yet varying 
widely in amount to meet the peculiarities of the case. 
In pastoral life cattle were specially exposed ; therefore 
the law ordained that if the thief had killed the ani- 
mal or sold it, he must restore — of oxen five for one ; 
of sheep, four. But if the animal was found alive in 
his hand, the restitution was only double — two for one. 
The law made the charitable supposition that the thief 
might yet repent and bring back the stolen property, 
and purposely favored this result. On the other hand 
the selling or destruction of the animal would indicate 
a fixed purpose to have the avails of it, and also to 
render detection more difficult — both of which pur- 
poses the law punished sharply. It may well be 

noted that restitution was a telling, stinging penalty, 
touching the sensibilities of the thief in a very tender 
point. The indolent or unprincipled man who thought 
to live upon his neighbor's toil, would find stealing 
very unprofitable. The law had the more grip in those 
times because if a man tried to put his property out of 
his hands to evade the demand for restitution, or were 
in fact too poor to restore four or five fold, there was al- 
ways the last resort — the law could take him for a 

slave ("servant") and make him work it out This 

was one of the incidental benefits of a hard system : it 
could be applied so as to make the penalties for theft 
very effectually stringent. 

The law punished trespass upon another's property 
and want of care for its due protection — on which 
points, subsequent statutes reaffirm and expand what 
we first find in Ex. 22. (See Deut. 22 : 1-4.) 

While the law was vigorous, not to say severe, against 
criminal theft, it was yet exceedingly lenient towards the 
unfortunate and innocent poor, e. g., 

(1.) It gave permission to eat another's property for 
the supply of present want. The specifications are — 
The grapes of thy neighbor's vineyard; and his stand- 
ing corn. Thou mayest eat grapes, but not put one in 
thy vessel; mayest pluck the heads of grain in thy 
hand, but never move thy sickle against thy neighbor's 
grain (Deut. 23 : 24, 25). 

(2.) It regulated thoughtfully and compassionately 
the whole subject of pledges, i. e. securities for the pay- 



288 LAWS AGAINST USURY. 

merit of debt. As first announced (Ex. 22: 26, 27), it 
provided that if the poor man's garment were taken in 
pledge, it must certainly be restored to him by sundown, 
because it was his bed-covering for the night; and God 
would surely hear the poor man's cry if he were com- 
pelled to lay himself down to sleep with no covering. 

As subsequently revised or enlarged (Deut. 24 : 6, 

10-13, 17), the statute peremptorily forbade taking the 
upper or the nether millstone in pledge, because no 
oriental family could subsist without these. It also 
forbade the creditor to go in to the poor man's house to 
get his pledge lest he fix his covetous eye on something 
there, but required him to wait patiently outside for the 
poor man to bring it out — a provision which manifests 
a specially delicate regard for the feelings of the poor. 
He was not obliged to expose his deep poverty, nor to 
disclose all he had to the greedy gaze of his more 

wealthy neighbor. The law also forbade the taking 

of a widow's raiment in pledge. 

(3.) The law was entirely explicit and positive in its 
prohibition of usury. By " usury " the Hebrew meant, 
not merely excessive or illegal interest, but interest it- 
self — all interest — money paid for the use of money, or 
any thing valuable paid for the use of any other prop- 
erty borrowed. The first statute (Ex. 22 : 25) was 

general, yet fully covered the principle : " If thou lend 
money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou 
shalt not be to him as an usurer, neither shalt thou lay 
upon him usury." The law contemplated the poor 
only ; for the rich are presumed to be above the neces- 
sity of borrowing money. The borrowing of money as 
capital to be used in trade, or in manufacture, or in the 
purchase of land, had no place at all in the business 
economy of Israel. The borrowing which the law con- 
templated was only that of the poor man to meet his 
imperative necessities. A man who had no accumula- 
tions to draw from for a sick day or a casualty, must 
borrow or go hungry. God speaks of such poor as " my 
people," and forbids taking interest on what they must 
needs borrow. 

In the later books (Lev. 25 : 35-38 and Deut. 23 : 19, 
20) we have perhaps a later and revised form of the 
statute. " If thy brother be waxen poor, thou shalt re- 
lieve him. Take thou no usury of him or increase; 



LAWS RELIEVING THE POOR. 289 

fear thy God, that thy neighbor may live with thee. 
Thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury, nor 
lend him thy victuals for increase." In Deut. (as above) 
the law discriminates between "thy brother" and a 
stranger. "Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy 
brother ; unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury." 
The ground for this discrimination against the stranger 
may be a purpose to discourage his residence in the 
land ; or it may be related to the general fact that for- 
eigners were the men of traffic. (The original words for 
Canaanite and for merchant were the same.) Trades- 
men, doing business on borrowed capital, might afford 
to pay interest; and on every principle of right and 
justice, ought to do so. But God did not encourage the 
Israelites in traffic with other nations. It would have 
been quite too perilous to their morals, and to their 
religion. 

The reader will scarcely need the suggestion that the 
Hebrew law against interest applies in our Christian 
age only to the case of loans made to the poor to meet 
their necessities. The spirit of the law unquestionably 
does apply in such cases, and does not apply to any 
other. 

(4.) Many special statutes contemplated relief for the poor. 

The corners and the gleanings of the harvest field ; 

a forgotten sheaf; a few clusters of grapes also and 
some olives on the olive tree, must be left for the poor 
and the stranger (Lev. 19 : 9, 10, and 23 : 32, and Deut. 
24 : 19-22) — each of these successive statutes adding 

somewhat in detail to the preceding. The day wages 

of the poor laborer must be promptly paid, even on the 
very same day (Lev. 19: 13 and Deut. 24: 14, 15). But 
especially the sabbatic year (each seventh) was de- 
signed to be a special benefaction to the poor. This law 
(Deut. 15 : 1-11) uses chiefly the word "release " in re- 
gard to the debts of the poor. Critics are sharply di- 
vided over the question whether this release was an 
entire remission of debts, or only a stay of collection, put- 
ting it over for this one year. In favor of the latter 
view, Michaelis and others urge that the reason for stay 
of collection was that no cultivation of land was per- 
mitted during this year, and hence there were no crops 
of this sort, and therefore only diminished means of 
paying debts. Also that the law might be so abused 



290 LAWS RELIEVING THE POOR. 

as mostly to annihilate all rights of property, inasmuch 
as the statute (v. 9) would virtually put the property 
of the more wealthy within the control of the less 
wealthy. Thou shalt not withhold because the year of 
release is at hand, etc. 

On the other hand, the arguments for construing the 
law to mean an actual release of debt in the case of 
"thy poor brother" or neighbor, are strong, and in my 
view, conclusive ; e. g. 

(a.) This is the legitimate meaning of the original 
word translated "release." There should never be any 
deviation from the legitimate sense of the original 
staple word, without cogent reasons — a principle which 
is doubly strong in the ivords of a law. 

(b.) This construction is fully in harmony with the 
genius of the entire code in all its statutes for the relief 
of the poor. 

(c.) On this construction the limitations of the stat- 
ute are precisely in place ; e. g. — to the case of " thy poor 
brother." " Thou shalt release save when there shall be 
no poor among you " : also — " If there be among you a 
poor man of one of thy brethren, etc., thou shalt not 
harden thy heart nor shut thy hand from thy poor 
brother, but shalt open thy hand wide unto him, and 
shall surely lend unto him sufficient for his need in 
that which he wanteth " — [not all your property : you 
are not required to make over every thing you have]. 
"Beware that there be not a thought in thy wicked 
heart, saying — The year of release is at hand" [and 
I shall never get my money or my grain back again], 
" and he cry unto the Lord against thee, and it be sin 
unto thee." This shaping of the statute plainly con- 
templates a real remission of this sort of debts on each 
seventh year. 

(d.) To the same purport is this — that the law ex- 
cepts debts against a foreigner : "Of a foreigner thou 
mayest exact it." Our translators have taken the lib- 
erty to add the word "again," but without the least 
authority from the Hebrew. The word " again " seems 
to come from the theory that this statute required a 
stay of collection for one year in the case of the for- 
eigner : but of this there is no proof in the law as it 

came from the hand of Moses. In the time of Nehe- 

miah (5 : 1-12) there was unquestionably an entire re- 



THE JUBILEE. 291 

mission of debts to the poor, and not the least hint that 
this was going beyond the Mosaic law. On the con- 
trary it is implied that "the fear of our God" (v. 9) — 
equivalent to obedience — would require just this. 

This seventh or sabbatic year had other special fea- 
tures besides the remission of the poor man's debts as 
in Deut. 15 : 1-11. These additional features appear in 
Lev. 25, which provides (vs. 2-7) that this year shall 
be a Sabbath of rest to the soil — rest from its usual cul- 
tivation. In this chapter we find also a kindred in- 
stitution — the Jubilee — each fiftieth year — next follow- 
ing each seventh Sabbatic year. Inasmuch as this 
arrangement would bring two years of land-rest together, 
the Lord gave a special promise that the fertility of the 
year immediately preceding should suffice against the 
necessities of these two years of rest — a fact which tes- 
tifies that God ruled his people Israel under a system 
of special providences. If Moses is to be considered as 
even in a secondary sense the legislator of the people, 
he must have had unbounded confidence in God's spe- 
cial direction and counsel in these statutes. 

The law of the Jubilee gave personal liberty to all 
bondmen. Of this, more must be said under " Hebrew 
servitude." It also provided for the return of all real 
estate — all the lands of Canaan — to their original pos- 
sessors. Lands could be alienated only till the jubilee. 
They were sold, if at all, subject to this law. Conse- 
quently a sale of land was only a lease for at longest 
forty-nine years — i. e. for the years intervening till the 
next jubilee. They were subject to redemption at any 
time — the price to be graduated by the years which 
the lease had to run. Houses in walled cities were re- 
deemable only within one j T ear from sale ; but in un- 
walled cities, houses followed the law of land, returning 
with the land to their original owner at the jubilee. 

The houses of Levites were accounted as land. These 

statutes had a twofold purpose ; to afford relief to the 
poor ; and to prevent the entire alienation of the lands 
of Canaan from the tribes, families, and individuals to 

whom they were originally given. The question, how 

far these institutions — the Sabbatic year and the Jubi- 
lee — were observed in the future history of Israel is for- 
eign from our present purpose. 



292 CRIMES AGAINST REPUTATION. 

VI. Crimes against reputation; (the details of the ninth 
commandment). 

Here are stringent statutes against false accusation 
and false witness. Under this general head fall two dis- 
tinct cases : — (a) Testimony given to favor the guilty 
(Ex. 23 : 1, 3) ; and (b) allegations designed to con- 
demn the innocent (Deut. 19 : 16-21). 

(a). The former class (as given Ex. 23: 1, 3) forbids 
not merely originating (" raise "), but taking up a false 
report and seconding it by indorsement. It warns men 
not to be drawn in to help the wicked in their malicious 
plots to screen each other, though they be many. The 
cause of the poor man which you may not favor (v. 3) 
is certainly supposed to be a bad one. Your sympathy 
for him as poor must not override justice and truth. 

(b). False witness, purposed to condemn the innocent, 
is met by the statute (Deut. 19 : 16-21). The accuser 
and the accused are to be brought face to face before the 
Lord and before the priests and the judges who are to 
"make diligent inquisition," obviously hearing both 
parties, and if the accuser is proved to be a false witness, 
" Ye §hall do to him as he thought to do to his brother; 
thine eye shall not pity, but life shall go for life ; eye 
for eye," etc. 

Tale-bearing, i. e. tattling, retailing scandal mali- 
ciously or for a past-time, needed the force of law to 
abate and suppress it in those times as in most other 
ages. " Thou shalt not go up and down as a tale-bearer 
among thy people, neither shalt thou stand against the 
blood of thy neighbor. I am the Lord" (Lev. 19: 16-18)— 
" Standing against the blood," must mean— taking 
ground against the very life, and must not be construed 
to forbid truthful testimony against the real murderer. 
But the informer should constantly remember that his 
neighbor's interests and life are too precious to be 
lightly tampered with. Thy neighbor may have said 
or done something wrong. Your duty in the case is not 
to scatter broadcast all you know and more than 
you know of his misdeeds; but first of all — "Thou 
shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart," but "love 
him as thyself" (v. 18); and next, "Thou shalt in 
anywise [by all means] rebuke thy neighbor, and 
not suffer sin upon him." This last clause has 



CRIMES AGAINST REPUTATION. 293 

been understood in two v^ays : — (a) Thou shalt not suffer 
the sin to lie upon him with no effort on thy part to 
bring him to repentance : or (b) Thou shalt not bear 
on thine own conscience the sin of neglecting to ad- 
monish him ; i. e. thou shalt not submit to bear this 
sin on his account — a sin which comes of knowing his 
crime and of failing in your duty to save him by means 
of judicious and fraternal rebuke. The latter construc- 
tion is best sustained by Hebrew usage of the words. 
See the same words, Lev. 22 : 9 and Num. 18 : 32, and 
the preposition "upon him/' in Ps. 69: 8 — "For thy sake 
have I borne," etc. The verb in this clause means 
rather to "bear" in your own person, than to " suffer" to 
exist in another. The passage, so interpreted, as- 
sumes it to be your solemn duty to labor to bring your 
neighbor to repentance if you are cognizant of his 
wrong-doing, and implies that you must lie under a 
load of sin if you fail to do so. But do it in love (loving 
him even as yourself) as well as in all fidelity to his 
soul, as also to your own. Do this instead of going up 
and down to scatter this scandal among those who will 
do nothing to save your erring neighbor, and nothing 
to relieve your conscience of your responsibility in his 
behalf. 

While this statute bears against giving information 
about misdeeds of minor sort, there were two crimes of 
such magnitude that every man was bound to testify 
in the proper form against them; viz. idolatry and 
murder. See the case of idolatry in Deut. 13 : 6-14 : 
" Neither shalt thou conceal him, but thou shalt surely 
kill him : thy hand shall be first upon him to put him 
to death, and afterward, the hand of all the people." 
(Also v. 14) The expiation for murder by an un- 
known hand included this most solemn protestation : 
" Our hands have not shed this blood, neither have our 
eyes seen it." Of course, whoever might have seen was 
most sacredly bound to testify. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



THE CIVIL INSTITUTES OF MOSES, CONTINUED. 
VII. Hebrew Servitude. 

Servitude existed before .Moses. It was no part of 
the mission of the Hebrew code to create it. Let it be 
forever admitted that the laws given of God through 
Moses can not be held responsible for the existence of 
slavery. They found it existing and proceeded there- 
fore to modify it; to soften its more rigid features; to ex- 
tract its carnivorous teeth ; to ordain that the slave had 
rights which the master and the nation were bound to 
respect — in short, to tone down the severities of the 
system from unendurable slavery to very tolerable 
servitude. 

By what means was this change wrought? What new 
elements were introduced to abate the severities of real 
slavery ? 

1. Man-stealing was punished with death. "He that 
stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in his 
hand, he shall surely be put to death" (Ex. 21: 16). 
The law as recited in Deut. 21: 7 applies to a man 
stealing one of his brethren of the children of Israel. 
As stated in Ex. 21 : 16 it is universal, with no limita- 
tion. Stealing a man is the crime. I see no reason to 
doubt that the law was intended to apply to men of 
every nationality — to men as made in God's image of 
whatever nation. 

This statute struck at the very root of real slavery. 
Both stealing and selling contemplate property — as- 
sume the fact of a property value. The spirit of the 
law is — Men shall never be degraded into merchandise. 
Every body knows that all American slavery began 
with stealing men from Africa and selling them. 
Servitude, involving a certain right to service and 
property in service, there might be, despite of this He- 
brew law; but real slavery — property in man as dis- 
(294) 



HEBREW SERVITUDE. 295 

tinct from property in his services, there could not be 
under this law. Moreover, the severity of this penalty 
must have thrown its shield of protection over the 
entire system of servitude. It was a very palpable in- 
dication of God's stern displeasure against the whole 
system of chattelizing human beings. 

2. The Hebrew law positively forbade the rendition 
of fugitives. "Thou shalt not deliver to his master the 
servant that has escaped from his master unto thee : he 
shall dwell with thee, even among you in that place 
which he shall choose in one of thy gates where it 
liketh him best ; thou shalt not oppress him " (Deut. 

23 : 15, 16). Observe it was not only impossible to 

have any law for the reclamation of fugitives — i. e. to 
have "a fugitive slave law" of the recent American 
pattern ; but the law was put on the other side. It de- 
clared — "Thou shalt not deliver him up to his mas- 
ter" — shalt not give his master information and help 
the arrest ; but shalt let him choose his abode by his 
own free and manly will. If his hardships are such 
under his bondage that he prefers to take his risk of 
finding a better living elsewhere, let him try it. Let 
no man stand in his way. He would not leave his 
master if his personal rights and interests were prop- 
erly cared for. But if his master is too selfish, or too 
cruel,' or too exacting of labor, or too stingy of bread or 
clothing, who shall judge but the servant himself? 
Therefore let the servant better his own condition if he 
can, and let all selfish, savage-hearted masters take 

warning! Such laws exorcise the real spirit of 

slavery with blessed rapidity. It would require but 
few such ameliorating statutes to tone it down from un- 
endurable slavery to very tolerable servitude. 

The spirit of this law is altogether the spirit of the 
Great Lawgiver when he found the Hebrews sorely op- 
pressed in Egypt ; smote off their chains ; brought them 
forth from their house of bondage, and placed them be- 
yond all reclamation. What he required his people 
now to do in behalf of any oppressed servant was only 
in spirit what he had done for them. 

3. Severe personal injuries gave the slave his free- 
dom. "If a man smite the eye of his servant or the 
eye of his maid that it perish, he shall let him go free 
for his eye's sake." So of the tooth (Ex. 21 : 26, 27). 



296 HEBREW SERVITUDE. 

The eye and the tooth are but specimen illustrations 
of the principle. A charge of shot in the leg could not 

be less under this law than a passport to freedom. 

Moreover, the statutes very specifically enjoined clem- 
ency and forbade rigor in the treatment of Hebrew 
servants (Lev. 25: 39-43,46). 

4. Of wider sweep in its influence and of inexpressi- 
ble value was the system of periodical emancipation. The 
term of service for the Hebrew-born was limited to six 
years. At the end of this term they went out free. 
Servants of foreign birth (as we shall see) went out at 

the Jubilee, each fiftieth year. The effect of this 

law was at once to lift from the heart the terrible in- 
cubus of a life-long bondage — that sense of a hopeless 
doom which knows no relief till death. Whatever the 
amount of discomfort or suffering involved in servitude 
might have been, the Hebrew servant had under this 

law the prospect of his freedom at no distant day. 

Moreover the accompanying provisions of this law were 
thoroughly humane. The servant who had sold him- 
self through extreme poverty (Lev. 25 : 47-55) might 
be redeemed at any time by a friend, or if he could 
command the means by extra labor or skill, he might 

reiieem himself. When his term expired, his master 

must not send him away empty, but must furnish him 
liberally out of his flock and out of his floor (grain), 
and even out of his wine-press — of any thing and every 
thing wherewith the Lord had blessed the master, he 
was to impart liberally to his manumitted servant 
(Deut. 15 : 12-15). So the servant would have a fair 
start in his new self-supporting life. It was a fore- 
thoughtful provision, full of the milk of a more than 
human kindness. 

Apparently this periodic emancipation applied to 
every class of Hebrew servants — to him who had sold 
himself because he had become too poor to provide for 
his family; to him who had been taken and sold for 
debt ; and to him who had been sold into servitude for 
crime. This latter case, however, is doubtful. 

Noticeably, this law provides for the family rights of 
the servant. If he had brought his wife with him into 
this state, he took her out with himself, and of course 
his children also. If his master had given him a wife, 
he retained her because of his property interest in her 



PERIODICAL EMANCIPATION. 297 

services, and her children with her for humanity's 
sake; for children under six years of age need their 
mother's care. Wives in that age of the world were 
paid for. 

Let it be noticed, the law assumes that possibly the 
servant may love his wife and his children and even 
his master so well that he chooses not to leave them. 
Very well ; if he will consent to come before the judges 
and in a solemn judicial manner, testify to this love of 
his heart, and moreover, will consent to endure the 
rather uncomfortable operation of having his ear bored 
through with an awl, then he may remain forever — i. e, 
during life. But the discomforts of this operation were 
intended to bear somewhat against this unlimited 
servitude. The law seemed to say to every servant — " It 
would probably be better for you to be your own 
master and live in freedom, rather than in even this 

very comfortable servitude. Every provision of this 

statute had a purpose. The servant must be brought 
before the judges to express in this public manner his 
choice to remain in servitude ; for this method would 
make it impossible for the master to misrepresent the 
will of his servant. Moreover, it seems probable that 
boring the ear was no badge of honor but the opposite, 
and therefore would bear against the man's choice of 
perpetual servitude. 

The law made special provision for the case of female 
servants. The original statute (Ex. 21 : 7-11) put her 
case on a different footing from that of her brother. 
"She shall not go out as the men-servants do." The lan- 
guage — "If a man sell his daughter to be a maid-serv- 
ant" — may seem at first view to be a case of slave-sale, 
involving real property in human flesh and bones. A 
closer examination will show that it comes under the 
usage of selling daughters to become wives; for this pur- 
chase " betrothed her to her master," or to " his son," 
and the law made special provision for her rights as 
such ; viz. that in case her master is not pleased with 
her, he shall let her be redeemed, " and shall have no 
power to sell her unto a strange nation." If betrothed 
to his son, he shall deal with her as with a daughter; 
if the son take another wife, he shall not abate from 
his duty as a husband toward her ; and if he refuse to 
do all the law demands, she is free — redeemed by law, 



298 THE SLAVERY BEFORE MOSES. 

"without money." These statutes of course shape 

themselves to the existing usages in respect to polyg- 
amy, concubinage, and easy divorce, sedulously protect- 
ing the rights of a female servant under these most 
unfavorable usages. 

It seems probable that these kind and considerate 
provisions failed to protect her rights as fully as the 
spirit of the law intended, and therefore a further modi- 
fication appears at a later period; for Deut. 15 : 17 de- 
clares that the six years' emancipation law shall apply 
to her also as truly as to her brother; — "and unto thy 
maid-servant thou shalt do likewise." 

5. In view of the fact that what we may call " relig- 
ious privileges" included rest from labor and more or 
less of religious and social festivity, the law was very 
specific in stipulating that the man-servant and the 
maid-servant must share in all these equally with the 
son and the daughter. We see this in the law of the 
Sabbath; in the feast upon the second tithes (Deut. 
12 : 17, 18) ; and in two of the great festivals, viz. the 
Pentecost and the Feast of Tabernacles (Deut. 16: 

11, 14). Thus they were put religiously and socially 

upon the same footing as children in the family. No 
bah of exclusion, no stigma of caste, could attach to 
their condition so long as these statutes were duly ob- 
served. 

6. By usage and without the necessity of statute, 
Hebrew servants held property. The old American 
doctrine — " The slave can own nothing" — had no place 
in the system of Hebrew servitude. The proof is two- 
fold: -(a) The statutes provided that "if able he 

might redeem himself" (Lev. 25: 49). This permis- 
sion would be only a taunting insult if in fact no He- 
brew servant could hold property. (b). The light of 

history bears witness : Ziba was a servant of the house 
of Saul; but he had servants under him — a round 
score ; " fifteen sons and twenty servants" (2 Sam. 9 : 10 
and 19 : 17), and seems to have had charge of cultivat- 
ing Saul's estates. 

Thus manifold and effective were the humane pro- 
visions which softened the severities of slavery, toning 
them down to a very tolerable system of servitude. 



THE SLAVERY BEFORE MOSES. 299 

The Slavery that Existed before Moses. 

We have spoken of Hebrew servitude as a modified 
system — which raises the question — "modified" from 
ichat? What was the pre-existing system upon which 
these modifications were superinduced? A full answer 
must include (a) The patriarchal system as it appears 
in the case of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob : and (b) The 
system of Egypt and perhaps other contemporary na- 
tions. 

(a.) In the patriarchal system servitude could not 
possibly have been compulsory. It must have been 
voluntary. Force, coercion, was utterly out of the ques- 
tion. Abraham had neither army nor police to hold 
his slaves in bondage. In fact they were his armed 
soldiers as against freebooting incursions or any hostile 
assault whatever. Manifestly they lived with him 
while they chose — no longer. Some of them rose to 
bear important responsibilities, e. g. Eliezer (Gen. 24) ; 
his two young men who went with him and Isaac to 
Moriah (Gen. 22). Isaac "had great store of serv- 
ants (Gen. 26: 14), but there is not the least intima- 
tion that they were entailed as part of his estate to 
either Esau or Jacob ; or that he received them by in- 
heritance from Abraham. Jacob had many servants 

(Gen. 30: 43), and in fact must have had to help him 
in the care of his flocks and herds: but the history 
shows that he did not take them with him into Egypt. 
Joseph's invitation left out the servants (Gen. 45 : 10, 
11.), and the record specifies all the family except the 
servants and gives us the actual enumeration- -all 
servants omitted (Gen. 46 : 5-26). Property in servants 
in the American sense, there was none. 

(b.) Of Egyptian slavery enough is known to show that 
they bought slaves brought in from other nations, hold- 
ing therefore a property right in them, and that they 
constituted a menial class in society. 

The condition of the Israelites under oppression there 
was peculiar. Manifestly they were not held by indi- 
vidual Egyptians as their personal property, but rather 
by the crown. The king of Egypt appears as the great 
slave-holder of the Hebrew people, making levies upon 
them for laborers at his pleasure, and exacting the 



300 THE JUBILEE. 

severest tasks with no limitations but his own will on 
the one hand and their possible endurance on the 
other. The question of letting the people go was (at 
least mainly) personal to himself and to his throne. 
His merciless severity would naturally tend to make 
slavery in Egypt heartlessly cruel. Laws to restrain 
masters from severity could not be thought of under 
such kings. It is easy to see that when, at and after 
Sinai, the Lord came to legislate for the Hebrew peo- 
ple, fresh from Egyptian usages and laws, there was 
abundant occasion for statutes to modify the severities 
of human bondage. With telling force the Lord could 
say — Never oppress your servants; ye know how op- 
pression feels ! 

The Jubilee.— (Lev. 25). 

In this chapter and here only we have an account of 
this peculiar institution. The following points in it 
deserve special attention. 

1. Its main scope and purpose were manifestly of the 
same sort with those of the Sabbatic year — a year of 
rest from labor, of recuperation for both the laborer and 
his' lands, and of joy in the God of their mercies. Par- 
ticularly it made provision for restoring lands which 
had been alienated by any means during the forty-nine 
intervening years. On this eventful year all lands were 
to return to the original proprietor and to his estate. 
The law provided that alienated lands might be re- 
deemed at any time for a price graduated by the years 
intervening before the Jubilee. But if the poor man 
was unable to redeem his land and had no relative or 
friend to redeem it for him before the Jubilee, it then 
returned to him by the statute with no redemption 
price. 

2. We must note its bearing upon Hebrew servants 
and its relation to the seventh year emancipation law. 

It treats of two classes of servants of Hebrew blood ; 

those who had sold themselves, because of their poverty, 
to a fellow Israelite ; and those who for the same reason 
had sold themselves to a wealthy foreigner residing in 
the land. As to the former class, the law enjoins kind 
treatment ; puts strongly the distinction between the 
hired and the bond-servant — permitting servants of 



THE JUBILEE. 301 

Hebrew birth to be held in the former state but not in 
the latter; and finally gave him and his children 

freedom at the Jubilee. Inasmuch as the seventh 

year emancipation law applied to this very class of 
servants, if it were enforced there could be no Hebrew 
servants to go out at the Jubilee except those who had 
not yet served six full years. This seems to be the 
bearing of the law of the Jubilee upon Hebrew servants. 
We can not assume that it superseded the seventh year 
law and took its place. The historic passage (Jer. 34 : 
8-17) would quite forbid such a construction. 

As to the second class — those who had sold themselves 
to a foreigner — the law gave the right of redemption to 
any of his friends or to himself, and fixed the terms, 
providing for his freedom at the Jubilee. 

3. The most difficult point is, the bearing of the Ju- 
bilee, if any, upon servants of foreign birth. Did it, or did 
it not, provide for their emancipation? 

The passage (Lev. 25 : 9, 10) seems very strong in 
favor of universal liberty, not omitting bond-servants 
of foreign birth. The words are — "Proclaim liberty 
through all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof." This 
proclamation was made with sound of trumpet, ringing 
out its shrill blast over all the land. Now let it be 
considered : If foreigners were not included, and if the 
seventh year emancipation law had been duly enforced, 
there could have been but a meager showing of freed- 
men — only those few Hebrew servants who had not 
filled out their six years of service. Is it credible that 
so much proclamation and so much public display could 
have meant only the emancipation of say one-tenth or 

one-twentieth of all the servants in the land? At 

any point of their history the number of foreign servants 
ought to have greatly exceeded the number of Hebrew 

birth — for two reasons : (a.) The law encouraged the 

taking of foreigners into this relation : and (b.) They 

continued in it at least till the Jubilee — their maximum 
service being therefore forty-nine years, while the max- 
imum service of the Hebrew-born was only six. There- 
fore I urge that a proclamation so high sounding and in 
terms so absolutely universal can not have left out the 
great majority of bondmen in the land. 

The opponents of this view rely upon the words (v. 
46) — "They shall be your bondmen forever" — w T hich 



302 THE JUBILEE. 

they claim must mean during life. But it may be 

replied — One human life is very much short of forever. 
Also, if the statute had meant during life, why did it 

not say so? Again; the order of the Hebrew words 

favors this construction : " Forever of them shall ye 
take servants" — or somewhat more literally: Forever 
among them shall ye serve yourselves, i. e. provide your- 
selves with servants. And this construction harmonizes 
fully with the drift of the context, the spirit of which 
is — Go to the heathen about you, or to heathen families 
living among you for your supply of bond-servants. Let 
this be the permanent arrangement. 

The English phrase — "bond-servant" may perhaps 
give a stronger sense than the Hebrew will warrant. 
The Hebrew suggests no sort of " bond " — no obligation 
of law or justice. It expresses a certain degree of em- 
phasis by means of repeating the words for service and 
servant, in this way : (v. 39), If thy brother with thee 
shall become weak " [broken down financially], and 
shall sell himself to thee, thou shalt not exact of him 
the service of a servant, [or serve thyself in him with 
the service of a servant]." This is all that "bond-ser- 
vajit " can mean. It is a somewhat intensified idea of 
service. Another prohibition in this passage is suf- 
ficiently explicit : " Thou shalt not rule over him with 
rigor " (vs. 43, 46), i. e. literally, with crushing ; shalt 
not break him down ; or in the American slave-holder's 
phrase " break him in." 

The case of foreign servants demands yet a few more 
words of explication. It can not be denied that the 
spirit of the Hebrew law favored the choice of foreign- 
ers for servants, and the increase of this class of popu- 
lation. This is plainly the doctrine of the passage Lev. 
25 : 44-46. In connection with this we may profita- 
bly study the law of the Passover in its relation to 
servants (Ex. 12: 43-49). "There shall no stranger 
eat thereof, but every man's servant that is bought for 
money, when thou hast circumcised him, then shall he eat 
thereof." That this law contemplated Gentile serv- 
ants is clear on two grounds : (a.) Only such would 

need circumcision — all Hebrews being circumcised 
when eight days old. (b.) The law (Lev. 25 : 44) re- 
quired them to take their servants from the heathen, 



SERVANTS OF FOREIGN BIRTH. 303 

and authorized them to "buy" such. The buying of a 
Hebrew servant was a very different thing. The j30or 
Hebrew sold himself — i. e. his services, and took pay in ad- 
vance of doing the work. Selling himself is precisely 
the sense of the Hebrew in Lev. 25 : 39, 47, though in 
the former case (v. 39) our translators made it "be 
sold" and in the latter "sell himself." The Hebrew 

verb is equally reflexive in both verses. Moreover, 

no man might steal a Hebrew and sell him on pain of 
death. It does not appear that Hebrew fathers sold 
their sons. When they took pay for a daughter, it 
came under the usage of paying for wives. She was 
betrothed to her purchaser (Ex. 21 : 7-11) and of course 
had the rights of a wife. Hence this "buying a serv- 
ant for money" (Ex. 12 : 44) contemplates a foreigner. 

The law proceeds to say — "A foreigner (one not a 

servant) and a hired servant shall not eat thereof." 

Furthermore, circumcision was naturalization; it 

brought the servant within the pale of the Hebrew 
community. For this law of the Passover declares that 
"when a stranger sojourning with thee, L e. in thy 
land, desires to keep the Passover to the Lord, let all 
his males be circumcised, and then let him come near 
and keep it; and he shall be as one that is born in the 
land;" i. e. his circumcision is equivalent in force to 
being born in the land; it secures his naturalization. 
Hence the buying of foreign servants would be a per- 
petual process of naturalizing them, and bringing them 
into the Hebrew community. They came to the Pass- 
over and were entitled to all the religious privileges of 
the children of Israel. Abraham himself circumcised, 
not his sons alone, but " all that were born in his house 
or bought with money of the stranger " (Gen. 17 : 23, 
27). Thus the system reached forth its arms, gath- 
ered to its genial bosom and blest with religious nur- 
ture thousands of alien birth, some of whom attained 
renown among the servants of the God of Israel. We 
have the history of Rahab and Ruth, and to name no 
more of "Uriah the Hittite," and of "Ittai the Gittite" 
[of Gath]. 

14 



304 JUDICIAL PROCEDURE. 



VIII. Judicial Procedure. 

Under this general head the following topics should 
receive attention. 

1. Judges. The reorganization suggested by Jethro 
has been noticed, and also its further modification to 

adjust it to the fixed residence in Canaan. Between 

Joshua and Saul, there was an irregular series of Su- 
preme Judges, closing with Samuel of whose circuit 
court, taking four cities in rotation, we have a notice in 
1 Sam. 7: 15-17. The kings manifestly held this 
function of Supreme Judge. In the absence of other 
Judges, the High Priest seems to have served ex- 
oflScio. His powers, under the " Judges" above re- 
ferred to and the kings, are not sharply defined ; but 
probably religious and semi-religious questions came 
before him and his associates. The Judges between 

Joshua and Samuel were military men. A special 

reorganization of the judiciary under Jehoshaphat (2 
Chron. 19 : 5-11) will repay a careful reading. It pro- 
vides subordinate judges in all the fortified cities ; sol- 
emnly admonishes them to administer justice in the 
fear of God; establishes a supreme court in Jerusalem, 
where " he set of the Levites, priests, and chief of the 
fathers of Israel for the judgment of the Lord and for 
controversies when they returned to Jerusalem " — the 
last clause apparently referring to cases carried up for 

decision before this supreme court. It should be 

noted that we read nothing of cases taken up to a 
higher court by appeal of a dissatisfied party ; but only 
as carried up by the lower court itself when the case 
seemed too hard or too high for its decision. This prin- 
ciple went into operation in the reorganization by 
Moses (Ex. 18 : 22, 26 and Deut. 1 : 17)— " The cause 
that is too hard for you, bring it to me and I will hear 
it." It passed into the general law as we may see 
(Deut. 17 : 8-13) which provides for a supreme court at 
the religious center, the judges being " the priests, the 
Levites, and the judges that shall be in those days." 

The warnings against partiality and bribery were 
earnest and solemn — the penalty for these offenses being 
left, it would seem, to be visited upon the offender by 
the Almighty (Ex. 23 : 6-8, and Lev. 19 : 15, and Deut. 



JUDICIAL PROCEDURE. 305 

1 : 17, and 16: 18-20). They were not even allowed to 
favor the poor man in his cause against justice (Ex. 23 : 
3 and Lev. 19 : 15) — there being sometimes a tempta- 
tion to do this out of sympathy with his poverty and 
his necessities. But God put justice in law above sym- 
pathy for even the necessitous poor. The public 

anathema fell on him who took a bribe to slay the in- 
nocent (Deut 27 : 25). 

2. The seat of justice — the place for holding court — 
was " in the gates of the city." Hence this being with 
all Orientals the place of public resort, the courts were 
public — open to all. 

3. The processes of prosecution are not specially de- 
scribed. In cases of a personal, private character, the 
aggrieved party brought suit. In cases of a public na- 
ture "the elders of the city" bore responsibilities, as we 
see in the case of murder by an unknown hand. A 
remarkable case of appeal to the sensibilities of the 
whole nation is given Judg. 19 : 25-30, under which the 
people woke to a consciousness of horrible wickedness 
in Israel, and their indignation became irrepressible ; 
yet they carefully sought counsel of the Lord in this 
terrible case. 

4. Advocates. We find no notice of professional advo- 
cates. The " lawyers n of Xew Testament history were 
men versed in the law and were teachers of law, but 
not by any means the modern advocate. Every man 
might be his own advocate, and even women were 
heard before no less a king than Solomon himself (1 
Kings 3: 16-18). Xoble-hearted, disinterested men 
seem in Oriental life to have undertaken this service 
voluntarily for the poor and the fatherless, of which 
Job gives a touching description (Job 29 : 7-17). 
Isaiah exhorts to this duty : "Plead for the widow " (I : 
17). It was the noble doctrine of this system — "Our 
law judges no man before it hears him and knows what 
he doeth" (Jit 7: 51\ Moses puts it thus — "Ye shall 
hear the small as well as the great n (Deut. 1 : 17). "If 
there arise a matter in judgment between blood and 
blood, between plea and plea; 7 etc. (Deut. 17 : 8). 

5. Of Witnesses — the points of chief importance are 
these : 

(1.) They testified under oath — the manner of admin- 
istration being this: The witness listened to the re- 



306 ' PUNISHMENTS. -". 

hearsal of the words, and gave his oral assent, "Amen," 
or, "As thou sayest." The passage (Lev. 5 : 1) describes 
the case of one who sins in this way, hearing the 
voice — i. e. the words of the sacred oath, adjuring him 
to testify whether he has seen or known any thing in 
this case. Then if he will not make known, " he shall 
bear his iniquity." — —A special statute for the case of 
a wife suspected of conjugal infidelity shows how she is 
to be put under this solemn oath (Num. 5: 19-22). 
She listens to the words of the oath and responds, 
"Amen, amen." (See also Prov. 29: 24 and Mat. 
26: 63). 

(2.) That the witnesses were examined separately 
and in presence of the accused appears probable from a 
comparison of Mat. 26: 61 with Mk. 14: 55-59. Jesus 
was present (Mat. 26: 62). 

(3.) As to the requisite number of witnesses — a crim- 
inal case of capital crime required two besides the ac- 
cuser (Deut. 17 : 6 and 19 : 15). Hence the phrase — " In 
the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word 

be established" (Mat. 18: 16). A supposed case is 

stated (Ex. 22; 10, 11) in which the complainant and 
the accused are the only witnesses. Both are put under 
oath ; but the testimony of the accused under oath seems 
to be accepted as his vindication. 

(4.) By another peculiar provision of the Mosaic stat- 
utes, the witnesses in certain cases must be first to ex- 
ecute the penalty (Deut. 17; 7, and 13: 9, and Acts 7 : 
58, and John 8 : 7). This provision was doubtless mor- 
ally wholesome. 

IX. Punishments, 

A few points not already brought to view deserve a 
brief notice. 

1. Fines.— Some were fixed by statute. The highest 
known to the law (one hundred shekels of silver) was 
laid on the man who falsely accused his wife of previous 
unchastity (Deut. 22 : 19). Another case among viola- 
tions of the seventh commandment appears (Deut. 22 : 

28, 29). In the case of an ox goring some one fatally, 

the penalty of death upon his owner might be commu- 
ted to a fine at the discretion of the judges (Ex. 21 : 28- 
31) — a wise provision because the real culpability of his 



PUNISHMENTS. 307 

owner must vary with circumstances. In another case 
(Ex. 21 : 22), the suffering party and the judge fixed 
the amount of the fine. 

2. The sin and the trespass offerings sustained a 
slight relation to fines, since the party bore the cost 
of the animal sacrificed — a young bullock, a kid of goats, 
etc. These laws may be seen in Lev. 4 and 5 and in 
Num. 15 : 27-29. They pertain to sins of ignorance and 
of remissness; never to presumptuous sins. In addi- 
tion to the cost of the sacrifice the penalty included a 
public confession of the offense, and was well adapted 
to make a good moral impression. 

The special cases which come under this general head 

of sin and trespass offerings were (1.) Unintentional 

transgressions of the Levitical law. (2.) The rash 

oath, ill-considered and not conscientiously kept (Lev. 

5 : 4). (3.) Perjury in a witness ; — not however the 

case of false sw T earing to condemn the innocent, which 
was punished by retaliation ; but the offense of not tes- 
tifying what he knew when put under oath (Lev. 5 : 

1). (4.) Debts due to the sanctuary — a failure to pay 

tithes •; the penalty being, one-fifth added to the original 
amount and all paid, coupled with the trespass offering 

(Lev. 5 : 14-16). (5.) Denying any thing given in 

trust, or retaining another man's lost property which 
he may have found, and similar offenses, coupled with 
false swearing (Lev. 6 : 1-7) ; the penalty being, to re- 
store with one-fifth added and to make his trespass 

offering. (6.) Adultery with a slave. The penalty — 

a sin-offering and the punishment of death commuted 
to stripes. 

3. Stripes were made the penalty of certain specified 
crimes (Ley. 19 : 20 and Deut. 22 : 18). The law was 
careful to limit the number of stripes to forty, giving 
as the reason — "Lest if thou shouldest exceed" [this 
number] "then thy brother should seem vile unto 
thee ; " i. e. not merely lest the man might lose his self- 
respect, but lest he lose the respect of the community, 
and be hopelessly degraded. In usage the Hebrews 
limited the number to thirty-nine— said to have been 
administered by thirteen strokes of a triple cord. 

4. Of retaliation ["lex talionis"] notice has been 
taken already. 



308 DESIGN OF PUNISHMENT. 

5. Excommunication ; excision ; being cut off from his 
people. When executed by God himself, it meant de- 
struction by some providential agency. Compare 1 

Kings 14 : 10 with 15 : 29 and 2 Kings 9 ; 8-10. 

When executed by human agency, it was capital pun- 
ishment, usually by stoning (Ex. 31 : 14, and Lev. 17 : 
4, and 20: 17,18). 

6. The customary modes of capital punishment were 
two : stoning and the sword. (Deut. 13 : 9, 10, and 
17 : 5, and Josh. 7 : 25.) The sword appears in later 
ages. 

7. Disgrace after death in some cases heightened the 
penalty, e. g. by burning the dead body (Gen. 38 : 24, and 
Lev. 20: 14, and 21 : 9). That in these cases the death 
was by stoning and the burning was only that of the 
dead body, seems to be sufficiently proved from Josh. 7 : 
15, 25. " All Israel stoned him n [Achan and his fam- 
ily] "with stones and burned them with fire after they 
had stoned them with stones." Their very bodies seem 

to have been thought of as polluted and polluting. 

Another method of posthumous disgrace was by hang- 
ing on a tree (Num. 25 : 4, 5 and Deut. 21 : 22, 23). The 
body must not remain suspended over night " that thy 
land' be not defiled; for he that is hanged is accursed 
of God." See cases of the execution of this law in Josh. 
8: 29 and 10: 26,27. 

Several forms of punishment were introduced from 
other nations in later ages which we may omit as for- 
eign from our subject. 

In closing this topic let it be noted that judicial pro- 
cedure and punishment were summary — both the trial 
and the execution being carried through with appar- 
ently no delay. Compared on these points with the 
most highly civilized countries of our age, the Hebrews 
have greatly the advantage, and the efficiency of their 
law must have been for this very reason surpassingly 
great. Their methods afforded but the smallest possi- 
ble hope of escape. Punishment followed close on the 
heels of detection, and usually, we must presume, of 

crime. Furthermore, these punishments, compared 

with those of other nations in that age were by no 
means severe. Indeed the modes of capital punishment 
which come to view in the Scriptures as existing among 
other nations were terribly barbarous compared with 



STATUTES WITHOUT PENALTIES. 309 

those of the Hebrew code ; e. g. burning in a fiery fur- 
nace ; being torruin pieces by lions ; being sawn asunder; 
crucifixion. 

The design of punishment is put in the plainest terms. 
In its severer forms it is not the discipline of the crim- 
inal but the good of the public — to deter the evil-minded 
from crime and so to make society safe from outrage. 
In the case of presumptuous sins we read — " That man 
shall die, and thou shalt put away the evil from Israel, 
and all the people shall hear and fear and do no more 
presumptuously " (Deut. 17.; 12, 13 and 19 : 20). 

It is worthy of special notice under this head that we 
find in this code a considerable number of statutes with 
no penalty attached which human hands were to inflict. 
God reserved the infliction of the penalty to himself. 
The fear of his displeasure, coupled with his promised 
rewards for obedience were the only forces coercing 
obedience to these statutes. They were left upon the 
conscience of the people, and upon their fears and hopes 
under a system in which God's hand in providence was 
often niacle most palpable. For cases in point I may 
refer to the laws against usury and requiring favors to 
be shown to the poor; — as for example (Deut. 15: 9, 
10) : " Beware that there be not a thought in thy wicked 
heart, saying — The seventh year, the year of release is 
at hand, and thine eye be evil against thy poor brother 
and thou givest him naught, and he cry unto the Lord 
against thee and it be sin upon thee. Thou shalt 
surely give him, and thine heart shall not be grieved 
when thou givest unto him ; because that for this thing 
the Lord thy God will bless thee in all thy works," etc. 

The moral power of this invisible force upon the 
heart and conscience of the people we shall be able to 
appreciate more justly if we carefully study the words 
which stand (Ex. 23 : 20-25), i. e. at the close of the 
first catalogue of the " statutes and judgments." It 
seems to come in here legitimately as a moral force to 
induce a conscientious and careful obedience to these 
statutes. " Behold" (calling special attention) " behold, 
I send an angel before thee to keep thee in the way, 
and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. 
Beware of him, and obey his voice ; provoke him not, 
for he will not pardon your transgressions, for my name 
is in him. But if thou shalt indeed obey his voice and 



310 STATUTES WITHOUT PENALTIES. 

do all that I speak, then I will be an enemy to thine 
enemies," etc. This angel, bearing authority to par- 
don or not pardon sins, and of whom the very God could 
say — " My name is in him" could be no less than really 
divine. Name in Hebrew usage as applied to God in- 
volves and implies his real nature — his essential at- 
tributes. Corresponding to this view of " the angel " in 
this passage is the injunction to " beware of him and 
to obey his voice" ; and also his power to forgive sins — 
for who can forgive sins but God only" ? This passage 
therefore affords decisive proof that the personage who 
manifested himself to Israel in the pillar of cloud and 
of fire ; whose presence abode in their tabernacle ; whose 
voice they heard in this holy law — was truly divine, and 
yet was mysteriously distinct from the speaker — the "I" 
— of this remarkable passage. Truly he was God, mani- 
fest — if not precisely in human flesh — yet in palpable 
forms, in tangible demonstrations, in voice of power 
and tongue of flame; in the luminous pillar; in per- 
petual agencies of protection and of supply as to earthly 
need; and, not least, as their Ruler and their Lord 
whose voice in these statutes it behooved them to hear 
and obey as they would hope to be blessed in their na- 
tional life and in any desirable prosperity. Hence it 
was both practicable and wise under this Hebrew sys- 
tem to leave some statutes upon the naked conscience 
of the people with no attempt to enforce obedience save 
the appeal to this invisible Presence. 

These remarks will naturally suggest to the thought- 
ful mind a train of inquiries of this sort : How can 

we account for it that the books of Moses allude so very 
rarely to the future state of man's being — to heaven 
and to hell ? Had even the best men of those times 
any definite belief in the future life and in its retri- 
bution for deeds done in this ? How happens it that 
both the law and the rewards or penalties of their 
civil code, and indeed of their religious code as well, 
make so much account of present retribution and so 
little of the future ? 

These points will be treated more conveniently and 
in a more satisfactory manner after the religious code 
shall have been examined and after we have surveyed 
the history of Israel in the wilderness — i. e. at the 
close of the present volume. 



THE HEBREW CODE AND EGYPT. 311 

There are two historic questions pertaining to this 
civil code of the Hebrews which have sufficient inter- 
est to justify a few moments' attention ; viz. 

I. How far was this system indebted to Egypt ? 

II. How far have the best civil codes of the most civilized 
nations of all subsequent history been indebted to this Hebrew 
code? 

I. As to the possible relations of this Hebrew code 
to Egyptian life and jurisprudence, perhaps the word 
" indebted" is too strong. It is by no means intended 
to disparage the divine originality of this law or of 
any and every feature of the system. I assume two 

things : (1.) That Moses, "learned in all the wisdom 

of the Egyptians," may have had intimate personal 
acquaintance with very many things in civil jurispru- 
dence which the Lord taught him in and through his 
Egyptian life rather than by immediate and independ- 
ent revelation: and (2.) That the people became 

familiar with some valuable usages and customs con- 
nected with Egyptian law and Egyptian life, and by 
this means w r ere prepared to receive and adopt them 
under this new code and in this new style of life in 
Canaan, when, without this previous culture, these 
laws and usage could not have gone into operation so 
readily if at all. 

The Hebrew code and its system of jurisprudence — 
as also the entire Hebrew national life — were bene- 
fited by the Egyptian in the following points : 

1. The example and silent influence of a full civil, 
written code of law. That Egypt had such a code ad- 
mits of no question. The 'Hebrew patriarchs, prior to 
the sojourn in Egypt, had nothing of the sort. Their 
life in Egypt therefore gave them their first lessons — 
their first ideas, of a complete code of written law. 
We shall be in small danger of over-estimating the 
value of these lessons and ideas in their bearings upon 
a higher civilization. 

2. Egypt gave to the Hebrew mind the example of a 
well digested system of judicial procedure, established 
courts and forms of trial ; laws put in force by the aid 
of judges, witnesses, and the systematic execution of 

penalties. Remarkably the last quarter of a century 

has brought to light documentary evidence of a judicial 
trial in Egypt as far back as the age of Moses, develop- 



312 THE HEBREW CODE AND EGYPT. 

ing the most finished method; well digested forms of 
procedure ; a state trial, conducted with great dignity 
and decorum ; and the whole proceeding put on record 
so carefully that this original document is before the 
world in perfect preservation at this day.* 

3. Egypt gave to the children of Israel the example 
of a national life based on agriculture, as distinct from and 
indeed opposed to the wandering, unsettled life of the 
shepherd. The nomadic mode of life, perpetuated by 
necessity to this day in the deserts of Arabia, in which 
individual right to the soil is unknown and no family 
has a fixed home, each living for the time where its 
flocks may chance to find herbage and water— this had 
been the style of the patriarchs before Jacob went to 
Egypt. It was not the best for social and mental 
culture. God had a better life for his people pros- 
pectively in Canaan, and their residence in Egypt in- 
troduced them to it and gave them a preparation for it. 
It made subsistence less precarious ; blended the culti- 
vation of the soil with the care of flocks and herds; 
provided for a denser population ; greatly enhanced the 
opportunities for social culture and for such a religious 
system as that of Israel. In a word it provided for a 
much higher Christian civilization than could have 
been possible under the strictly nomadic mode of life. 
To Egypt, the nation was indebted for the example 
and for the training into this agricultural mode of 
life. 

4. In another important respect, the example of the 
national life of Egypt was a preordained training for 
their own national life in Canaan : — it was that of a 
people providing for their own wants; living within 
themselves; maintaining substantially non-intercourse 
with other nations, and for the most part excluding 
foreign commerce. Such was Egypt during the resi- 
dence of Israel there, and such God wisely designed Is- 
rael to be in her promised land of Canaan. As to Israel 
in Canaan, the purposes of this policy are obvious — 
protection from the contaminating influences of idol- 



*See a "State trial in ancient Egypt," fully reported in Bib. 
Sacra, July, 1869, p. 577. This is written in the hieratic text; is 
known as " The Judicial Papyrus " ; is now in the museum of Turin 
and is presumed to be the official record. 



THE HEBREW CODE AND EGYPT. 313 

atry, not to say also from the contaminations of luxury 
and wealth. 

5. In Egypt, the priests were the learned class of the 
empire, and held the highest responsibilities in the 
civil and judicial as well as the religious life of the na- 
tion. A system essentially the same was introduced 
into Israel, the priests and the Levites holding the 
same place in the nation which they had seen held by 
the priests in Egypt. 

6. It is a very noticeable fact in the history of the 
legal life in Egypt, that though magic arts were in 
a sense tolerated and indeed were resorted to by the 
king in his emergencies, yet their influence in society 
proved to be so pernicious as to demand legal restraint. 
We have the record of a man indicted "for many crimes 
and wickednesses committed through his magic arts 
and writings, such as paralyzing limbs, empowering a 
slave to do audacious things," etc. The decision of the 
court in his case reads — " For his various abominations, 
the greatest in the world, he is condemned to death." 

It will be remembered that the Mosaic law held 

all practice of magic arts to be a penal offense, punisha- 
ble with death (Ex. 22 : 18 and Lev. 20 : 27). 

7. In some points the spirit of the Mosaic code was 
so greatly in advance of the Egyptian as to stand re- 
lated to it, not in the way of imitation or even modifi- 
cation, but of direct opposition. It held squarely the 
opposite doctrine and put forth statutes of an opposite 
character. Thus, the Egyptian code legalized slavery, 
and had its special law for the reclamation of fugitives. 
Among the recent discoveries in Egyptian antiquities 
"A warrant for the arrest of fugitive slaves " has been 
brought to light. From the tone of this warrant and 
from other evidence, collateral, it is inferred that slave- 
holders were obliged by law to register them in a list 
kept by government and disputes with regard to own- 
ership must be brought before the judges. The rights 
of the master in his slave were not absolute. It was 
not by virtue of orders direct from the owner that 
search was instituted and arrest made, but by the au- 
thority of a high functionary of government, to whom 
the case is reported and who issues his mandate. Thus 
the government itself put forth its hand to recover a 
slave who had escaped from any citizen. It was 



314 MOSES ; AND" LATER JURISPRUDENCE. 

therefore specially pertinent that the law of Jehovah 
to Israel should plant itself on ground precisely the re- 
verse of this : — no reclamation of fugitives whatsoever. 
Thou shalt not do what Egyptian slave-holders were au- 
thorized by the highest authority of the kingdom to 
do — force back the escaped fugitive to his unendurable 
bondage. 

In the line of their religious institutions Israel stood 
related to Egypt in numerous particulars, borrowing 
some things for the adornment of its tabernacle from 
Egyptian art; and on the other hand, guarding by 
stringent prohibitions against many Egyptian usages 
associated with idolatry. These points will be in place 
after we have considered the religious institutions of 
Moses. 

II. The second proposed historic question, viz. How 
far have the best civil codes of all history and how far 
has the world at large been indebted to this Hebrew 
code ? — opens a field of inquiry quite too wide to be fully 
canvassed within our prescribed limits. A few hints 
may be useful perhaps to guide the further inquiries 
of the reader. The following points are put compre- 
hensively and suggestively: 

1. Moses sought to impress it upon his people that 
this system far surpassed that of any other nation. 
" Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgments, 
even as the Lord my God commanded me. . . . Keep, 
therefore, and do them, for this is your wisdom and un- 
derstanding in the sight of all the nations who shall 
hear of all these statutes and shall say, Surely this na- 
tion is a wise and understanding people, for what great 
nation hath their God so nigh to them as the Lord our 
God is to us in all that we call upon him for ? And 
what great nation hath statutes and judgments so 
righteous as all this law which I set before you this 
day"? (Deut. 4: 5-8.) 

2. The Hebrew system surpassed all others, especially 
in this — that it gave to human government and law the 
sanction of God's authority, and enforced them upon the 
human heart and conscience by this most impressive 
and benign of all iniiuences. 

3. Preparatory to this result it maintained against 
the whole Pagan world the doctrine of one God — perfect 
in character, supreme in power, righteous in all his ad- 






MOSES ; AND LATER JURISPRUDENCE. 315 

ministration of rewards and punishments. Only so 
could it make the idea of God a really wholesome power 
and his authority effective in sustaining civil govern- 
ment. 

4. This divinely given code rested upon justice and 
equity, and determined every thing by this standard. 
So doing, it ruled out at once a multitude of interests 
and ends which human laws have often sought to secure. 
Its example therefore, in so far at least, was simply and 
supremely beneficent. 

5. In yet further detail, it recognized the common and 
equal rights of all men, irrespective of condition, rank, 
wealth — holding constantly the doctrine, u No respect of 
persons." 

6. It appreciated at their just value the rights of the 
poor and of all that large class who look only to God 
and to human law for protection. 

We come now to the question of historic fact : Did 
this Hebrew code and government send forth its influence upon 
the nations of ancient history? Did it in any perceptible 
degree leaven the best systems of human law and juris- 
prudence. If the proof for the affirmative falls short 

of positive certainty, what is its amount of probability? 

Here we may fitly consider — 

(a.) That God chose for Israel the land of Canaan, in 
the center of the ancient w r orld of mind ; immediately 
between Egypt on the one hand and Babylon, Assyria, 
Persia — all the great nations of Western Asia — on the 
other; and closely contiguous to ancient Greece and 
Rome. 

(b.) That David and Solomon became known to all 
the great powers of the world of their time. Solomon's 
renown turned largely on the fact that his people were 
prosperous and happ}^, his government well ordered, 
and his own wisdom in all affairs of state unsurpassed. 

It is simply impossible that such examples should 

drop powerless upon the nations of the earth. 

(c.) That at a later period the personal history of 
Mordecai, of Esther, and especially of Daniel in the 
courts of Nebuchadnezzar and of Cyrus show that the 
Jews, their religion, their God, and their law, did im- 
press themselves upon the greatest centers of influence 
and power in their time. 

(d.) This dispersion of the Jews at and after their 



316 MOSES ; AND LATER JURISPRUDENCE. 

captivity planted them in large numbers in the chief 
seats of human science and learning ; in Egypt on the 
South-West ; in Babylon, Persia, and adjacent countries 
of the East. It is historically certain that in the age 
of the Ptolemies, a large body of learned Jews lived in 
Egypt; that the Old Testament was translated into 
Greek by request of Ptolemy Philadelphus; that the 
Egypt of that age was the school of wisdom and juris- 
prudence for Ancient Greece and was herself the pupil 

of Moses.* That the best Greek authors knew Moses 

is matter of history. Longinus quotes from Moses 
(Gen. 1 : 3) in his treatise on Sublimity ; Strabo makes 
honorable mention of him as a law-giver ; and Diodorus 
Siculus acknowledges him to be " the first of legisla- 
tors from whom all laws had their origin." Numenius 
a Greek philosopher of the Pythagorean school, speak- 
ing of Plato, exclaims — " What is Plato but Moses Atti- 
cising " — L e. teaching in Attic Greek ? Origen believed 
that Plato drew largely from Moses. The list of em- 
inent Grecian authors and savans who went personally 
to Egypt for wisdom and science is long — such as Thales, 
Anaximander, Anaxagoras, Pythagoras, Plato, Herodo- 
tus. There they came into contact with learned Jews 
and riot improbably with the writings of Moses.f Prof. 
Wines (p. 335) cites the learned Grotius as saying — 
" The most ancient Attic laws, whence in aftertimes the 
Roman were derived, owe their origin to Moses' law. 
That the Grecians, especially the Attics, took their laws 
from Moses is credible. This is the reason why the 
Attic laws and the Roman twelve Tables which sprang 

from them so much resemble the Hebrew laws." 

This similarity between the Attic laws and those of 
Moses has been noticed by many other learned men, e. g. 
Josephus, Clement of Alexandria, Augustine, Sir 
Matthew Hale, Archbishop Potter. The last named in 
his " Grecian Antiquities " has adduced many points of 

* Of Ptolemy Philadelphus Prof. Wines says — " He was delighted 
with the laws of Moses ; pronounced his legislation wonderful ; was 
astonished at the depth of his wisdom, and professed to have learned 
from him the true science of government." — Wines' Commentaries. 
See also Josephus against Apion, p. 308. 

t Prof. Wines' Commentaries on the Laws of the Ancient He- 
brews, pp. 312-388, a work which elaborates its theme very fully, 
substantiating its points by copious authorities. 



MOSES ; AND LATER JURISPRUDENCE. 317 

Grecian law which seem to have been taken from Moses — 
viz. the laws of divorce ; the purgation oath compared 
with " the oath of jealousy" among the Hebrews; the 
harvest and vintage festival ; the law of first-fruits ; the 
law requiring the best offerings for God; the portion 
for the priests; protection to the man-slayer at their 
altars; requiring priests to be unblemished; the agra- 
rian law ; laws regulating descent of property, and pro- 
hibiting marriage within certain degrees of consan- 
guinity. Plato in his ideal "Republic" is thought to 

have drawn largely from Moses. Clement of Alexan- 
dria accosts him (by Apostrophe) — "But as for laws, 
whatever are true were conveyed to thee from the He- 
brews." 

These historic facts seem to indicate the definite 
channel through which the laws of Moses reached the 
Grecian mind in its earliest stages of culture and thus 
wrought themselves into the great fountains of Grecian 
and Roman civilization and jurisprudence. 

(e.) There seem to be strong grounds for the gen- 
eral statement that the greatest reformers of all known 
history have acted upon the ideas of Moses, and have 
probably drawn their doctrines more or less directly 
from that fountain. I will venture to place in this 
category Zoroaster, Plato, Confucius, Buddha, and Ma- 
homet. These men were in their time reformers of 
society, of morals, and of jurisprudence. Their influ- 
ence led toward if not fully unto the doctrine of one God, 
and by natural consequence, to a purer morality and 
juster views of law and equity ; of love to one's neigh- 
bor and purity of life. 1 regret that my limits for- 
bid any attempt to present the historic evidence 
which might support more or less fully these broad, 
comprehensive statements. The historic evidence that 
Zoroaster, Plato, and Mahomet drew from Moses is very 
strong. Of the great Indian reformer and of the Chi- 
nese comparatively little is known. 

(f.) Of Roman law as finally embodied in the great 
code of Justinian, it has been already suggested that 
its best things came from Moses and the Septuagint 

through Greece and the Egypt of the Ptolemies. 1 

add two other remarks: — (a) That in the age of Jus- 
tinian (first half of the sixth Christian century) primi- 
tive Christianity had quite fully leavened the public 



318 MOSES AND LATEH JURISPRUDENCE. 

sentiment and thus the jurisprudence of the then civ- 
ilized world. -(b.) That when Justinian created a 

commission of learned jurists to " collect the scattered 
monuments of ancient jurisprudence," he recommended 
them in settling any point to regard neither the num- 
ber nor the reputation of the jurisconsults who had 
given opinions on the subject, but to be guided solely 
by reason and equity.* 

(g.) Of Alfred the Great (reigned A. D. 871-901) the 
central testimony of history is that he was severely 
just Despite of surroundings almost barbarous, he rose 
by dint of his irrepressible manliness to become the 
greatest legislator and scholar of his age, and so was 
able to lay the foundations for the best and truest 
glory of the English name. The common law of Eng- 
land and of the English-speaking world began its de- 
velopment under his hand. One fact is of itself a vol- 
ume of testimony to the spirit of this ancient law. 
When after a long struggle Wilberforce brought the 
question before the English bench — Does English law 
sanction human bondage? the world heard the an- 
swer — Never. " Slaves can not breathe in England." 
What moment they take in her pure air, they are free! 
The spirit of her law from the days of Alfred was 
justice and righteousness between a man and his neigh- 
bor. The laws of Moses were in Alfred's eye; the 
spirit of those laws filled and fired his noble soul. It is 
currently said that the telling words which describe 
the needy as u God's poor" are original (for our mother 
Saxon tongue) with him. , Moses had reiterated the 

sentiment long ages before. " Sir Matthew Hale has 

traced the influence of the Bible generally on the laws 
of England. Sismondi testifies that Alfred, in causing 
a republication of the Saxon laws, inserted several stat- 
utes taken from the code of Moses, to give new strength 
and cogency to the principles of morality. 

" Thus have the principles of the Mosaic code found 
their way to a greater or less extent into the jurispru- 
dence of all civilized nations." [Wines — p. 337.] 

* Taylor's Manual of History, p. 335. Moses and the Lord speak- 
ing through him (Deut. 1 : 16, 17 and 16 : 18-20) had announced 
this doctrine more than two thousand years before. It is fair to 
presume that the earlier promulgation had sent its influence down 
the ages to Justinian's time. 



PROGRESSIVE REVELATIONS OP GOD. 319 

It falls within our plan to speak briefly of the civil 
code of Moses as a series of progressive revelations of God to 
man. 

I have spoken of the law of Sinai as a manifestation 
of God to man at once sublime in its majesty and most 
benignly practical in its moral bearings. The civil 
code — " the statutes and judgments " — carry out yet 
more fully the practical unfoldings of God's wisdom 
and of his sense of justice and right as between man 
and man. It is not easy to select the most striking 
cases to illustrate this point, for the whole code is 
radiant with divine wisdom and aglow with testi- 
monies of his love, manifesting itself in wisest legis- 
lation for human welfare. Confining our attention 

to the second table of the law of Sinai — man's relation 
to his fellow-man — we may consider how much there 
is here adapted to conserve all the best elements of 
society — in securing the honor due to parents and 
rulers; in guarding human life and providing the 
means for its protection ; in making the marriage cove- 
nant sacred; on the one hand shielding the sexual 
relation of the race against abuses most pernicious; 
and on the other, providing agencies which may enrich 
man's social life with priceless blessings. So also the 
statutes in detail respecting rights of property and 
rights of reputation are replete w T ith fresh testimonies 

to the wisdom and the love of the Great Father. 

Speaking frankly of the impressions made on my mind 
by this study of the code of Moses, I must say that no 
part has seemed to me more deeply imbued with the 
tenderness and pity of the Lord than the provisions 
made for the poor, and the restrictions and limitations 
upon personal servitude. In all his utterances on these 
points the Lord assumes that no interests of man more 
need his protection than these, and he comes promptly 
to the front to give it. He would have us know that 
over these interests his watchful eye never sleeps ; his 
quick ear is never shut to any cry for help. The rich 
and the mighty may get on without his special aid ; 
the poor are his own wards and shall never lack his 
sympathy nor his present hand. Human laws are in 
great part worthless — at least they miss their most im- 
portant function unless they make it their chief 

endeavor to protect the interests and rights of those 






320 PROGRESSIVE REVELATIONS OF GOD. 

who, powerless in themselves, drop upon the strong arm 
of law for their defence. Society and legislation might 
as well not be as to forget that they exist as appointed 
of God mainly for the sake of the poor and the other- 
wise unprotected and unbefriended. Such needy ones 
every human society will have for the moral trial of 
those who control society, and I may add, to draw out 
the sympathy of the Great Father. 

These revelations of himself stand forth in sunlight 
throughout this Mosaic code. They are a glorious ad- 
vance upon all that the world had seen before. The 
true mission of civil law is brought out here with great 
fullness ; for it seems to be every-where assumed that if 
laws protect and befriend the poor, they protect and be- 
friend all. If the spirit of law faithfully guards their 
interests, it can not well fail to guard all interests that 
need the guardianship of human legislation. It is a 
priceless boon to the race to have these ideas so beauti- 
fully set forth and so substantially embodied in a code 
of laws fresh from the hand and from the heart of the 
Infinite Father. 



CHAPTER XIX. 



THE KELIGIOUS SYSTEM OF THE HEBEEWS. 

This system contemplates as its ultimate end the 
obedience, homage, and worship due from men to God. 
As a prime means toward this end, it prescribes modes 
and forms of worship* It proposes to bring God near 
to men and men near to God; and for this purpose 
would cultivate in men the spirit of penitence and of 
faith — impressing them with a sense of their sins and 
suggesting to them how sin may be forgiven ; and how, 
on the basis of God's own provision for pardon, he can 

accept the humble, reverent worship of his people. 

These fundamental ideas respecting the sinner's ac- 
ceptance with God, the system now before us sought 
especially to develop by means of visible symbols — 
these symbols constituting the very elaborate and mi- 
nutely described religious system of the Hebrews. This 

system, having long since "waxed old and vanished 
away " is no longer in practice, and therefore can not 
be useful as a rule of present duty, but is useful for the 
light it throws on the great and fundamental ques- 
tions — How shall man — a sinner— become just before 
God? Is an atonement necessary? What are the 
fundamental ideas of " atonement " ? How were they 
developed in the Mosaic system, and what light does this 
development bring to the atonement presented to view 
in the New Testament ? 

With superlative wisdom God began to give lessons 
on this great subject very early in the history of our 
race. It was wise to give such lessons long and care- 
fully before the Great Atoning Sacrifice came in human 
flesh. It was also w T ise to give them largely by visible 
illustrations — by the aid of a system having so much 
of the external and the visible that minds not dis- 
ciplined to abstract thought might see the truth and 
feel its power by means of sensible manifestations. 

The reader will now see readily the purpose of the 
ensuing examination of this religious system. It is not 
for historic curiosity — in which case we might select 

(321) 






322 CLASSIFICATION OF SACRIFICES. 

points amusing or strange or sensational ; it is not to 
guide the worshiper (as Moses sought to do) in the 
minutest details of the system that he might make no 
mistake in obeying it: — but it is to gather as best we 
may its designed moral impression, to study its under- 
lying assumptions, and evolve its true doctrine in re- 
gard to the great question of the sinner's acceptance be- 
fore a holy and righteous God. 

Briefly and comprehensively we may classify the 
leading features of this system viewed externally, on 
this wise : 

I. Its prescribed sacrifices and offerings. 

II. Its stated times and seasons of worship. 

III. Its sacred edifices and apparatus for worship. 

IV. The religious orders — classes designated for sacred 
service. 

I. The sacrifices and offerings of this system may be 

classified variously : e. g. (1.) Bloody, or not bloody: — 

terms which will be readily understood. The former 
were slain animals, a portion of whose blood was 
sprinkled. The latter included offerings of flour, oil, 

wine, etc. Or (2.) Some were specially required: 

others were voluntary or free-will offerings. (3.) 

They may be classified with reference to the times and 
seasons when they were to be made ; some being daily, 
as the morning and evening sacrifice; others for the 
Sabbath ; others for the new moons ; others on occasion 
of the three great yearly festivals; and, among the 
most useful for its suggestive import, those of the great 

day of atonement. (4.) Or we might classify them 

under the somewhat distinctive names given them in 
the law, of which we find a large number. We have 
(a.) The generic word sacrifice [Heb. Zebah] — a word 
which implies slaying, taking life :— — (b.) Another 
quite generic term, " offering," which is used to trans- 
late several Hebrew words, and of course with very 
considerable latitude of meaning : (c.) " Burnt-offer- 
ing " — [which is the quite constant translation of the 
Heb. "Olah"] signifying what goes up upon the altar 
and is consumed there. The phrase " whole burnt-of- 
fering" gives according to the Hebrew, the sense of 
completeness — the whole of the animal being burned on 
the altar: (d.) u Sin-offering"— -in Hebrew, one of 



CHOICE OF ANIMALS FOR SACRIFICE. 323 

the most common words for sin — [hatta]. Paul's use of 
the corresponding Greek word (2 Cor. 5: 21) follows 
this usage of the word for sin : "God hath made him to 
be sin" [a sin-offering] "for us who knew no sin," etc. : 

(e.) " Trespass offering " ; — which is another of the 

Hebrew words for sin, offense ["asham"]: (f.) 

".Meat-offering"; some variety of food or drink other 

than flesh : -(g.) " Peace-offering " — which seems 

closely related to the "thank-offering," being an ex- 
pression of gratitude to God; the animal sacrificed 
being in large part eaten socially by the offerer and 
his friends; also by the poor, the widow, servants, etc.: 

(h.) Wave and heave offerings — terms which refer 

to ceremonies of elevating or waving certain parts of 
the sacrifice. 

(5.) A much more important distinction in the Mo- 
saic sacrifices lies between those which were expiatory 
and those which were not specially so, the former class 
being slain animals whose fat at least was burned on 
the altar and whose blood was sprinkled in specified 
and various ways; the latter class having somewhat va- 
rious objects, but chiefly that of expressing gratitude 
for blessings or joy in the God of their salvation. 

Two other points in respect to sacrifices are of im- 
portance, viz — 

(a.) The choice of animals to be slain in sacrifice. 

(b.) The killing itself, coupled with the use made of 
the blood, of the fat, and in some cases of the flesh— 
with the attendant ceremonies. 

(a.) It should be carefully noted that animals for sac- 
rifice were not taken up at random. It was not merely 
life and blood that were sought. They were not the 
wild, but the tame, domesticated; not the savage, flesh- 
eating animals, but the docile, grass-eating; not an- 
imals mostly or altogether useless to man, but pre- 
cisely those which were most useful ; not animals of the 
sort nobody loves or cares for, but those most loved 
and cared for, between whom and the human family 
there often arises a special intimacy and affection. In 
a word they were the representatives of utility, do- 
cility, and innocence. The ox, patient of toil, in his 
early years invaluable for food; the goat, useful for 
flesh and milk ; the lamb— the symbol of affection, at- 



324 THE SCENES OF SACRIFICE. 

tachment, innocence : — these three classes of animals 
formed the staple material for bloody sacrifice. [Of 
birds, the turtle-dove and young pigeon, being less ex- 
pensive, were permitted to the poor. As naturally rep- 
resenting innocence and loveliness, they are quite of 

the same class]. It sometimes escapes notice that 

the Orientals brought these animals much nearer to 
their hearts and homes than our Western notions and 
habits know of. We forget that not infrequently to 
this day they live under the same roof along with sons 
and daughters. The prophet Nathan in that touching 
verse about the "one little ewe lamb" (2 Sam. 12: 3) 
drew not from his imagination but from Oriental life. 
" The poor man had nothing save one* little ewe lamb 
which he had bought and nourished up, and it grew up 
together with him and with his children : it did eat of 
his own meat" [food] "and drank from his own cup 
and lay in his bosom, and was to him as hia daughter." 
Moreover, the Hebrew might not select for sacri- 
fice the deformed, the torn, the lame, the sickly; but 
evermore, the unblemished, the perfect — those specially 
lovable and choice pets around which the hearts of the 
household, young and old, were wont to cling : of these 
must the worshiper take for the altar. 

Let us think of the scene at that altar of sacrifice. 
The place is in the front court of the tabernacle, whose 
inner sanctuary was made glorious with the visible 
presence of Jehovah. The one all-engrossing thought as- 
sociated with this sacred spot, was — God is here. I go 
up to meet God. Before his face I bring this prescribed 
offering. It is one of my sweet lambs of the flock, or 
as the case may be, a young- bullock of one or two years 
old. I know that the animal must die there. Either 
in my own person or through the priest, acting in my 
behalf, I am to lay my hand on the head of the victim 
and thus confess my sin. From that moment the in- 
nocent lamb takes my place and stands before the exe- 
cutioner, as if guilty of capital crime. The sight and 
the smell of blood ; the struggle and the recoil ; the out- 
cry of horror — the only awful, horrible sound uttered by 
these animals — go to make up a scene which, once wit- 
nessed, can never be forgotten. We of this age might 
see it in some of its aspects if we would ; we rarely do. 
We should find it, not in our worshiping sanctuaries 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF SACRIFICE. 325 

but in the secluded slaughter-house whither no one is 
ever attracted — whither none ever go save those who 
must. Think of the blood, the death-groans, the strug- 
gle, the whole dying scene. Is there any meaning in 
it? Is there any thing in it appropriate to the sanc- 
tuary of God and to his solemn worship ? 

The transaction is by no means so mysterious as it 
might be. It would be profoundly mysterious were it 
not that man is a sinner before the holy law of God — 
a sinner under condemnation of death. It would be ut- 
terly inexplicable if there were not in nature, in 
thought, in fact, something which we may call substi- 
tution, to which we give the name vicarious — some- 
thing which involves, not indeed an entire exchange 
of one personality for another, but something which 
approximates toward it. One being suffers in the place 
and stead of another. An innocent being steps into 
the place of a guilty one and takes upon himself the 
guilty man's doom. We need not pause here to hunt 
up analogies of this sort in human life ; suffice it that 
God signifies by these striking symbols that he has 
found a place for this principle in his great scheme for 
the pardon of sinners condemned to death by his holy 
law, and that he saw fit to fill this Hebrew religious 
system absolutely full of illustrative typical represen- 
tations of this stupendous fact. The elementary facts 
in this system of sacrifices, considered as illustrating 
the scheme of pardon are few and simple ; thus — 

(a). Man has sinned against God and stands con- 
demned by his law to eternal death. 

(b). God loves this sinning man and longs to save 

him — but must not break down his law. So he finds 

a Lamb for a sacrifice whose death for sinners will abun- 
dantly sustain the majesty of law, and proceeds there- 
upon to "lay on him the iniquity of us all." This done, 
it only remains that the sinner repent of his sin, and 
humbly, thankfully accept the death of this Lamb of 

sacrifice in place of his own eternal death. These few 

and simple elements comprise substantially the essence 
of this wonderful system. 

This system seeks a symbolic representation in these 
bloody sacrifices. The offerer brings forward his lamb 
of the flock ; he lays his hand upon that innocent head 
and confesses there his sin : he in a sort transfers his 



326 THE PORTION TAKEN AS FOOD. - 

own personality — or more precisely, his own sin and 
guilt, to that animal victim ; he stands by and witnesses 
the death-scene with a deepened sense that he deserves 
a death far worse than that himself. But when the 
fires from heaven descend and consume his offering, and 
he finds himself not only spared but blessed of God and 
bidden to go in peace, he gets a sense unknown before, 
of the peace and joy of pardoned sin. The blood 
sprinkled upon and around the altar and toward the 
most holy place and upon himself becomes a memorial 
"of what his salvation cost; the pardon himself receives 
testifies how much it is worth, "speaking better things 
than the blood of Abel." 

If any special argument should seem called for to 
prove that this is the true significance of these bloody 
sacrifices, we shall come to it with better preparation 
after the main points of the system are more fully before 
us. 

As an illustrative system, there is yet one other point 
of great significance,: viz. that in many of these sacrifices 
a portion of the animal was eate7iby the offerer and by his 
family and friends. This great amount of animal flesh 
was, not all consumed by the fires of the altar. Yet we 
are not to suppose that public economy — the saving of 
so much valuable human food— was the prime consider- 
ation. We must go deeper than this. Nor was it that 
the Lord would cultivate the social nature of his wor- 
shiping people, and therefore provided these materials 
for agreeable social feasting. We must go very much 
deeper than even this. This feasting upon the flesh of 
the slain animal is in germ what the gospel gives us 
in full development, viz. that the same Lamb of Calvary 
who " washed us from our sins in his own blood " " gave 
us his flesh to eat " as " the bread of life." The memo- 
rial supper carries in it the same double symbol — blood 
and bread — the blood looking toward pardon ; the bread 
toward sustenance for the spiritual life. So the pious 
Israelite might on the one hand see the blood of his 
sacrifice gurgling forth, caught, sprinkled toward the 
mercy-seat and upon his own person ; and on the other 
hand, might take of the flesh of his slain lamb and sit 
down, not merely in peace but in joyful thanksgiving 
that death brings life — that sacrificial blood brings after 
it the new life of the redeemed, restoreci sinner, and su$- 



SACRED TIMES AND SEASONS. 327 

tenance therefor from the very animal whose body and 
blood became symbols of his pardon. 

Besides these sacrifices of a general character, the 
system provided others of a special and personal char- 
acter for individuals under peculiar circumstances, e. g. 
for the case of vows ; of purification from ceremonial 
uncleanness ; for the restored leper, etc. Of these I need 
say only that they suggest the fitness of recognizing 
God's hand every-where, in all possible events and under 
all the various dispensations of providence. These 
events are never barren of significance. It behooves us 
to study their meaning and adjust ourselves to God's 
hand with resignation and with gratitude — with a 

sense of our unworthiness and of God's great mercy. 

The detailed methods of that ancient system have at 
this day no vital interest. 

Scarcely of the nature of sacrifice, yet intensifying 
the idea of ceremonial uncleanness was the burning of 
the " red heifer " — the gathering up of her ashes and 
the preparation from them of " the water of separa- 
tion " — a purification from sin in the ceremonial sense. 
Num. 19 gives the details, specifying the sorts of un- 
cleanness which this purifying water washed away. 
The writer to the Hebrews (9 : 13, 14) gave the great 
moral inference thus : " For if the blood of bulls and of 
goats and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean 
sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh, how much more 
shall the blood of Christ who through the eternal Spirit 
offered himself unto God ; purge your conscience from 
dead works to serve the living God " ? 

II. Stated Times and Seasons of Worship. 

1. The Morning and Evening Sacrifice. 

Two lambs of one year were offered every day; the 
one in the morning and the other at evening [Heb. 
"between the evenings"]; burnt offerings, consumed 
wholly upon the altar. They were accompanied with 
a small portion of flour, oil, and wine. This was a per- 
petual ordinance, never to be omitted. The original 
institution (Ex. 29 : 38-46) is accompanied with God's 
very gracious promise to meet with his people and dwell 
15 



328 THE THREE GREAT FESTIVALS. 

among them, sanctifying the place of this meeting by 
his glory. Nothing could suggest more pertinently and 
tenderly that God loves to see the face of his worship- 
ing people and to meet them as each day opens in the 
morning and as it closes with the setting sun. Let this 
communion between God and his sons and daughters 

never be in any wise interrupted. The usage seems 

to have led pious Jews in later times to adopt these 
hours for their morning and evening prayer, as we may 
see in the case of Daniel (9 : 21), and in the New Tes- 
tament history. The ritual for these sacrifices is 

given in detail (Num. 28 : 3-8). 

2. The Sacrifices for the Sabbath. 

Each Sabbath had an extra service in addition to the 
continual morning and evening sacrifice — two lambs of 
the first year without spot ; with the attendant meat 
and drink-offerings (Num. 29 : 9, 10). 

3. The sacrifices at each new moon were on a larger scale 
than either of the preceding, viz. two young bullocks, 
one ram, and seven lambs for the burnt-offering ; one 
kid of goats for the sin-offering. As the Hebrew months 
were lunar (not solar), these sacrifices upon the appear- 
ance of the new moon inaugurated the successive 
months. It was probably for this reason that they were 
announced with blowing of trumpets (Num. 10: 10). 
The calendar was thus regulated — a matter of special 
importance, since it fixed the time of their three great 
religious festivals as also the great day of atonement. 

4. The Three Great Religious Festivals. 

Of these the first in order (the Passover) has been 
considered already. 

The next in order of time was the Pentecost — otherwise 
called " the feast of weeks, of the first-fruits of wheat- 
harvest " (Ex. 34: 22) ; "the feast of harvest, the first- 
fruits of thy labors which thou hast sown in the field " 
(Ex. 23: 16) ; also "the day of first-fruits" (Num. 28: 
26). The other passages which treat of it are Lev. 23 : 

15-21 and Deut. 16 : 9-12) The name Pentecost is not 

from the Hebrew but from the Greek, meaning the 



THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 329 

fiftieth day, i. e. after the great Sabbath, which fell 

during the Passover week (Lev. 23 : 15, 16). On the 

first day after that Sabbath, the first-fruits of their 
barley harvest were brought before the Lord. From 
that point seven full weeks were numbered, and on the 
fiftieth day the feast of Pentecost occurred. 

This festival, unlike the other two in duration, was 
of one day only — at least this is plainly assumed : " In 
the day of the first-fruits'' (Num. 28 : 26), also in Lev. 

23 : 2i, only one day is spoken of. It was specially a 

day of thanksgiving for the first-fruits of the w T heat 
harvest. Two loaves made of the new wheat flour were 

waved before the Lord on this hallow r ed day. The 

reference (in Deut. 16: 10-12) gives prominence to the 
social and joyful character of the day. " Thou shalt 
keep the feast unto the Lord thy God with a tribute of 
a free-will offering of thy hand which thou shalt give 
according as the Lord thy God hath blessed thee, and 
thou shalt rejoice before the Lord thy God, thou and 
thy son and thy daughter, and thy man-servant and 
thy maid-servant, and the Levite that is within thy 
gates, and the stranger, the fatherless and the widow 
that are among you." 

As a feast of joyful thanksgiving over the first-fruits 
of their principal grain harvest, it w r as eminently the 
appropriate occasion for the Pentecostal scene of the 
first great Christian ingathering. How suggestive of 
the gratitude due to God for the shedding forth of the 
Holy Ghost and the glorious fruitage from this gospel 
power! 

Some have supposed (not without reason) that the 
Hebrew Pentecost commemorated the completion of 
the giving of the laws by the hand of Moses, which 
they suppose was brought within fifty days from the 
first Passover. Of this however the books of Moses 
affirm nothing explicitly. 

The third and last of the three great festivals was 
" the Feast of Tabernacles" otherwise called " the feast of 
ingathering at the end of the year when thou hast 
gathered in thy labors out of the field" (Ex. 23 : 16). 

The speciality of this feast was the dwelling in 

booths or tabernacles, made of " boughs of goodly trees, 
branches of palm trees and the boughs of thick trees 
and willows of the brook" (Lev. 23: 40). This feast 



330 THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 

began on the fourteenth day of the seventh month and 
continued during eight days, the first and the last be- 
ing days of special solemnity. It had a double purpose, 
viz. to commemorate the forty years wandering of the 
fathers in the wilderness, dwelling in tents; and to 
give thanks to God for the last harvests of the year — 
the fruits of the olive and the grape — last in order — 
being now all gathered in. 

Thus none of these three great feasts omitted the 
element of thanksgiving for the fruits of the season, 
the first barley sheaves being brought with grateful 
thanks before the Lord during the Passover ; the first- 
fruits of the wheat harvest giving a special thanksgiv- 
ing character to the Feast of Pentecost ; and the latest 
fruits, the olive and the grape, reminding them of God's 
crowning blessing upon the labors of the year at the 
Feast of Tabernacles. What a beautiful training into 
the service of thanksgiving for the fruits of the earth ! 

This last of the festivals was pre-eminently one of 
joyful festivity, and of loud and high praises to the 
Lord, their Great Benefactor. The Jews have a saying 
— that " whoever has not seen the rejoicing of the last 
great day of the Feast of Tabernacles has never seen 
a day of joy in his life." 

The principal passages of Moses that treat of it are 
Ex. 23: 16, and 34: 22, and Lev. 23: 34-43, and Num. 
29: 12-40, and Deut. 16: 13-15. 

The celebration of this feast in the age of Nehemiah 
(8 : 14-18) the reader should not fail to notice. At 
this time the law was read daily in the hearing of the 
people. The law of Moses provided for this public read- 
ing on each seventh, i. e. the Sabbatic year, during the 
Feast of Tabernacles (Deut. 31 : 10-13). 

The striking allusion (Jn. 7 : 37) to the scenes on 
the last great day of the feast will be readily recalled. 
A custom unknown to the law of Moses had then come 
into practice — that of going in vast procession to the 
fountain of Siloam for water, and bearing it with joy- 
ful acclaim to the temple to pour it out there before 
the Lord. While this procession was passing, Jesus 
lifted up his voice and cried — "If any man thirst, 
let him come unto me and drink." May we sup- 
pose that possibly the words of Isaiah were before him : 
— " Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters" 



THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 331 

— to these waters of life which I give for the life of the 
world ! 

Upon these three great festivals all the males of Is- 
rael were required to appear before the Lord at the 
one place of his choice — the tabernacle or the temple 
— ultimately in Jerusalem " whither the tribes go up." 
The women of Israel manifestly went when they chose 
and could. According to Oriental usage they traveled 
in groups — little caravans — several adjacent families, 
or as the case might be by households, the patriarch 
with his children and children's children together, 
moving on with many a song of social cheer and grate- 
ful praise till at length they lifted up their eyes to the 
hills of the goodly city. The so-called " songs of degrees" 
(Ps. 120-134) — more strictly songs of the stages or up- 
goings — are specimens of this free and outflowing wor- 
ship of the traveling companies, bound upward to 
Jerusalem. The allusion in Luke 2 : 41-45, is pleasant 
to think of. 

We must not overlook the fact that the Lord relieved 
their minds of all fear lest their defenseless homes 
might be assailed and robbed and perhaps their wives 
and little ones murdered by foreign enemies while all 
their able-bodied men were away from their homes in 
Jerusalem. "Neither shall any man desire thy land 
when thou shalt go up to appear before the Lord thy 
God thrice in the year" (Ex. 34 : 24). None but a God 
of universal providence and omnipotent resources could 
safely make such a promise. In their own Jehovah 
they might safely trust. 

Of sacred seasons, the most peculiar and striking yet 
remains to be noticed, viz. the great day of atonement. 
This was one day only ; was not a feast day but a fast — 
a day " in which ye shall afflict your souls" i. e. subject 
yourselves to the discomforts and pains of entire absti- 
nence from food for the whole day, "from even to 
even." Whoever would not afflict his soul on this day 
must be " cut off from his people." All labor was for- 
bidden under the same penalty. The passages Lev. 23 : 
26-32 and Num. 29 : 7-11 give these general features of 
the institution. Only in Lev. 16 do we find a full de- 
scription. In this chapter it appears that the original 
appointment of this day stands connected with the sad 



332 



THE GREAT DAY OF ATONEMENT. 



death of Nadab and Abihu, the two eldest sons of Aaron 
for their rash unauthorized offering of strange fire be- 
fore the Lord (Lev. 10: 1-8). That awful scene of 
death suggested the great necessity of ceremonial 
purity in the priesthood and of the utmost care and 
self-control when they came before God. There would 
be sins in the priesthood and sins among the people of 
which they might not be aware : hence the propriety 
of one comprehensive, all-embracing service for atone- 
ment. 

The points to be specially noted in this service are — 
That the High Priest washed himself clean; put on 
white linen garments, symbolic of purity, and then 
made a special offering for his own sins and for the sin 
of all the people. The latter had this striking peculi- 
arity — that two goats were taken for a sin-offering, 
upon whom lots were cast to select one for the Lord 
and one for Azazel [Eng. " scape-goat "]. Another still 
more important peculiarity was that on this day only 
(never on any other) the High Priest went alone into 
the most holy place, bearing both the blood of the sin- 
offering and incense. First he bore into the most holy 
place, the blood of a bullock as a sin-offering for himself, 
and sprinkled it with his finger upon the mercy-seat 
and in front of *the mercy-seat seven times. He also 
bore a censer full of coals from the great altar and upon 
it burned incense, the smoke of which enshrouded the 
mercy-seat. Then the goat upon which the lot fell for 
the Lord was slain, and the High Priest bore his blood 
also into the most holy place and sprinkled it there to 
make atonement for the whole people. No other man 
save the High Priest might go in at any time on pain 
of death. 

The other goat, called in our English version "the 
scape-goat" was then disposed of thus: Aaron "laid 
both his hands upon the head of this goat and con- 
fessed over him all the iniquities of the children of 
Israel and all their transgressions in all their sins, 
putting them upon the head of the goat, and then sent him 
away by a fit man into the wilderness — the goat bear- 
ing upon himself all their iniquities into a land not in- 
habited." He was then set at liberty in the wilder- 
ness (Lev. 16: 20-22). The precise meaning of the 

word Azazel [" scape-goat "] and the reason for using 



THE GREAT DAY OF ATONEMENT. 333 

this name have been much disputed. Our English 
Bible fails to give a satisfactory translation of v. 8 
where by a most obvious antithesis the sacred lot 
selects one of the two goats for Jehovah and the other 
for Azazel. Was it, as many suppose, for Satan, con- 
ceived of as " walking through those dry and desolate 
places, seeking rest but finding none " — to whom this 
goat, symbolically bearing the sins of the whole people, 
is sent? If so, what is implied and signified in this 
sending of the goat to him? I must say I am not wise 
on these points. If any ideas were current in that age 
in respect to Satan which might illustrate this trans- 
action, they have not come down to us. It must I 
think suffice for us to see in these two goats for a sin- 
offering a sort of double figure to indicate the atone- 
ment — the first one slain in the usual way and his 
blood sprinkled before the mercy-seat — a solemn wit- 
ness that without the shedding of blood there can be no 
remission of sin: the other, supplementing the great 
idea of atonement by a most vivid representation of 
sins borne aivay — forever away, to be known and remem- 
bered no more. The sins of the whole people were 
transferred to the head of this second goat; he takes 
them away into the unknown desolate wilderness, 
never to return. Symbolically, the sins are gone for- 
ever! The prophet Micah (7: 19) gives a turn to 

the same thought only slightly different — " Thou wilt 
cast all their sins into the depths of the sea." Jere- 
miah also (31 : 34) — " I will remember their sins no 
more." No symbol could give more precisely, more un- 
equivocally, more forcibly, the great idea of taking away 
sins. You see them transferred to this second goat by 
means of hands imposed and formal declaration, u put- 
ting them [the sins] upon the head of the goat n ; and then 
he is driven away, bearing his burden into an un- 
known, desolate land, never to be heard from again! 

The sacrifice of the first goat for a sin-offering and 

the sprinkling of his blood before the sacred Presence 
of Jehovah had the usual significance of an innocent 
animal substituted for the guilty sinner — the former 
dying that the latter might not die — thus showing how 
God could safely forgive sin. These two goats therefore 
represent respectively the two great ideas which make 
up the atonement — the first signifying by ichat means 



334 SACRED EDIFICES AND APPARATUS. 

God can testify duly against sin while yet he forgives 
the sinner; and the second certifying that — the inno- 
cent victim having been substituted for the sinner and 
slain in his stead— God does truly take sins forever away. 
In briefest phrase these coupled ideas stand out before 
us in the New Testament: " Behold the Lamb of God 
who taketh away the sin of the world " (John 1 : 29). 

III. Sacred Edifices and Apparatus. 

A system of worship which included altars and sacri- 
fices, and much more, one which had the ark of the 
covenant and the visible manifestation of Jehovah's 
presence, demanded an edifice for its center and home. 
It was essential to the proper reverence that this 
edifice should provide a place of seclusion as well as of 

safe-keeping for its most sacred things. Moreover, 

so long as the people were unsettled — subject to re- 
moval any day — this structure must be movable, like 
the tents of all nomadic people. Hence the first 
structure was the Tabernacle or Sacred Tent A gen- 
eral idea of it may be presented to the reader thus : — 
Conceive of an inclosed court, one hundred cubits long 
by fifty wide [the cubit being eighteen inches] ; this 
inclosure being made by hanging curtains of linen five 
cubits high, suspended from horizontal rods which 
were supported by posts. The entrance to this in- 
closure was always at its eastern end, and the eastern 
section, forming the outer or first court, was twenty 
cubits in depth, cut off from the rest of the inclosed 

area by curtains. In the center of the rear portion 

stood the sacred tent proper, thirty cubits in length 
from east to west, and ten cubits in width. This also 
was in two principal apartments, the eastern being 
twenty cubits by ten, known as "the holy place"; the 
western, " the most holy place," or the " Holy of holies," 
being ten cubits square. The perpendicular walls of 
this sacred tent were of boards set on end, ten cubits 
high, so supported as to be readily set up, taken down, 
and transported. The covering was four-fold, of cloth 
and skins, and was manifestly arranged like the roof of 
a house, the covering passing over a ridge-pole in the 
center. Such briefly was this sacred structure. 



SACRED EDIFICES AND APPARATUS. 335 

Of its furniture, the important articles were as fol- 
lows : 

(a.) In the open court in front of the tabernacle 
proper, were the great altar of burnt-offering and a laver 
— an immense reservoir or tank for water, (b.) In the 
holy place — the first section of the sacred tent — stood the 
altar of incense; the table of shew-bread; and the 
golden candlestick. (c.) In the most holy place, en- 
shrouded in the thick darkness, stood the ark of the 
covenant, containing originally the two tables of stone 
on which the ten commandments were written, the pot 
of manna, and Aaron's rod that budded. Upon the lid 
of this ark, known as " the mercy-seat," there reposed 
the refulgence of the Divine Presence — a visible bright- 
ness and glory, called by the later Jews " the shechi- 
nah" — itself overshadowed by the wings of cherubic 
figures which rested upon either end of the ark. 

The whole structure might be readily taken down 
and transported from place to place with all its furni- 
ture ; parties being designated for this service. 

In Num. 10 : 35, 36 we have the words customarily 
used by Moses as a form of prayer, accompanying the 
order for striking and pitching tents: "When the ark 
set forward Moses said, Rise up, Lord, and let thine 
enemies be scattered, and let those that hate thee flee 
before thee: and when it rested he said, Return, 
Lord, unto the ten thousands of Israel." 

Of the temple built by Solomon I need not say more 
than this — that its plan was essentially that of the 
tabernacle, differing in the following points : Its di- 
mensions were twice as great; and it was built for a 
permanent, immovable edifice, of the most substantial 
and costly materials. 

IV. The Sacred Orders. 

The tribe of Levi was chosen and set apart for the 
services of worship and of religious instruction. Out 
of this tribe the family of Aaron was selected for the 
priesthood. The most sacred services devolved upon 
the priests, the High Priest only being permitted to 
enter the most holy place once a year, as we have seen. 
The Levites performed subordinate services, supplying 
the requisite wood and water for so vast a system of 



336 THE SACRED ORDERS. 

sacrifices and offerings, and serving also in the trans- 
portation of the sacred tent and its furniture. At a 
later period the service of song in the house of the 
Lord was in their hands. 

The law provided a full ritual for the induction of 
the High Priest into his office and for the consecration 
of all the priests to their work. Their robes of office, 
their various dress on all occasions, are detailed with 

great minuteness. The law also provided specially 

for their subsistence. A portion of various sacrifices 
fell to them as their perquisite. The great expense 
of the entire ritual service, including the cost of the 
animals offered for the people at large ; the support of 
the priests, and to some extent of the Levites, was pro- 
vided for by law in the tithes ; the poll-tax of a half- 
shekel from every man of Israel; and from various 
other sources. 

In the ultimate settlement in Canaan, forty-eight 
cities with their suburbs were given to the Levites. 
They were thus distributed among the entire popula- 
tion of Canaan both east and west of the Jordan, and 
if true to their mission would fill a very important 
sphere in both the civil and the religious life of the 
nation. Of their civil and judicial duties I have spoken 

already. They were also teachers of religion. Their 

suburban territory would afford them a small amount 
of land for cultivation ; but the divine plan was that 
they who served at the altar should live from the altar. 
While religious services were conscientiously performed 
and the religious spirit was in due strength, both 
priests and Levites would be comfortably fed and clad. 
Idolatry and religious declension would cut their sup- 
plies short. 

The careful reader of those portions of Exodus, Le- 
viticus, and Numbers which give the plan of the taber- 
nacle, the ritual of the priests and Levites and the 
minute detail of numerous sacrifices and offerings and 
purifications, will not need the suggestion that in many 
respects the interest and the value of these details have 
mostly passed away. Of prime importance in that age ; 
vital to the proper construction of the tabernacle; 
vital to the due consecration of priest and Levite and 
to their instruction in duty ; entirely essential to the 
ends of a ritual system which was to be the religious 



PRESENT VALUE OF THE MOSAIC RITUAL. 337 

law of a great people — they were all in place then and 
were indispensable ; but in most respects this interest 
and value have long since ceased. Whereas in the 
time of Moses not one word of this minute detail was 
superfluous, not one point could be safely omitted ; now, 
it may be passed over with only brief notice. Few will 
care to read all its particulars. 
Yet two points deserve remark : 

1. That this very minuteness of detail is the strongest 
evidence of the genuineness and antiquity of these 
books. They were certainly written at the time of the 
events they record. They never could have been gotten 
up in any age subsequent to the events. The specifi- 
cations for the tabernacle and for all its furniture had 
a purpose then ; but could have had no purpose to jus- 
tify such minuteness after the construction was finished. 
It would be the supremest folly to forge such documents 
ages after the events had passed. No man in his senses 
ever attempts such a forgery. Men never submit to 
such labor without an object; and the case precludes 
the possibility of any object after the tent was built 
and after the ritual was fully understood and wrought 
into established usage. 

2. While these minute details neither require nor re- 
ward particular investigation in our day, yet taken in 
whole they are pregnant with great moral lessons for all 
time. 

(1.) There was a perpetual inculcation of cleanliness, 
external purity; and the most careful avoidance of 
whatever was defiling. The ceremonial washings and 
cleansings, the removal from the camp, or as the case 
may be, the seclusion from the court of the tabernacle 
for a term of purification, occur frequently. By a nat- 
ural law of mind, sin is associated with uncleanness ; 
crime is defiling. Hence, with almost infinite pains 
the Lord was impressing upon his people the great idea 
that their God who deigned to dwell among them " was 
of purer eyes than to behold iniquity." He could not 
abide with them save as they kept themselves clean 
and pure. 

(2.) On every hand we note the most solemn inculca- 
tion of care, thoughtfulness, consideration, especially in 
their religious worship, and the most impressive warn- 
ings against a rash and inconsiderate spirit. Hence 



338 ITS LESSONS ON THE BLOOD OF ATONEMENT. 

wine was forbidden to the priests when about to go to 
the altar (Lev. 10: 8-11). It seemed that God could 
have no patience with the thoughtless and irreverent. 
At whatever cost, the fear of the Lord must be im- 
pressed upon the people — else all effort for their re- 
ligious culture would be vain. 

(3.) Their great thanksgiving festivals; their nu- 
merous thank-offerings ; their vows; their required 
tithes — all concur in this one idea- -the recognition of 
God as the Giver of all blessings, their great personal 
and national Benefactor. No pains was spared to im- 
press and enforce this great truth. The long course of 
God's redeeming mercies toward their nation; the 
rescue from Egyptian bondage; the miraculous sup- 
plies of bread and water forty years in the desert; the 
gift of the goodly land of Canaan; — these were the 
staple facts of their history which God sought to en- 
grave upon the national heart and to work into the 
living thought of the thousands of Israel. By every 
hopeful appliance their religious system was shaped to 
keep alive and intensify these feelings. 

(4.) More important than all the rest were the great 
moral lessons set forth by the perpetual presence of atoning 
blood. The Israelites were never allowed to forget that 
they were sinners, and that their approach to God must 
always be through the blood of atonement. No day 
might begin, no day might close, without the shedding 
of animal blood — the sacrifice of an innocent animal's 
life. The great days were great because of the multi- 
plication of these sacrifices — evermore distinguished 
and memorable for the rivers of blood that flowed; for 
the struggles and throes of the dying; for the sprink- 
ling of blood, blood, blood, all round about the hallowed 
altar, toward the unseen Presence within the most holy 

place, and upon the assembled hosts of Israel. It 

may cost us a few moments' effort to reproduce those 
scenes before our mind's eye so as to take in their full 
significance ; but this effort to comprehend that ancient 
ritual would bring its reward. What a demonstration 
it would be in proof that "without the shedding of 
blood there is no remission " ! that God never looks pro- 
pitiously on guilty sinners save through the bleeding 
sacrifice of his crucified Son! As bearing upon the 
great questions — the fact and the nature of the atone- 



ITS LESSONS ON THE BLOOD OF ATONEMENT. 339 

ment — this bloody ritual has a most vital and impres- 
sive significance. No questions of deeper and more 
vital import can ever arise than such as these : Was the 
death of Christ expiatory ? Was his blood shed for the 
sins of men? Did he lay down his life, an innocent 
victim, that the guilty sinners who place their hands 
upon his sacred head and there confess their sins may 
live and never die? In a word, was his death fore- 
shadowed and its true significance pre-intimated by the 
bloody offerings enjoined in this Hebrew system ? 

Argumentatively, it would seem that these great 
questions are decided forever by the following consider- 
ations : 

1. If the bloody sacrifices of this ancient system do 
not set forth the atoning death of Christ, they mean 
nothing ; this, or nothing at all. 

2. The writer to the Hebrew Christians testifies that 
they mean this. To give the proof of this statement in 
full would repeat entire the seventh, eighth, ninth, and 
tenth chapters of this epistle. It would be idle to say 
that this writer does not refer to the sacrificial system 
of ancient Israel ; equally idle to claim that he does not 
speak of the bloody death of Christ ; more than idle to 
deny that in his view that old system sought to illus- 
trate this new one — those bloody scenes were foreshad- 
owing pre-intiniations of Christ's death ; that those 
priests were precursors of this greater High Priest; 
that the blood which Aaron bore once a year into the 
most holy place meant neither more nor less than that 
Jesus was in his time to enter once for all into a yet 
more holy place with his own blood and thus achieve 
for us eternal redemption. Jesus " needed not daily as 
did those priests to offer sacrifice, first for his own sins 
and then for the people's ; for this he did once " [for all] 
" when he offered up himself "(Heb. 7: 27). 

3. All the New Testament writers were Jews ; men 
of Jewish education, men of life-long training in re- 
ligious ideas based on this Hebrew sacrificial system. 
They never speak of the purpose or results of Christ's 
death save in terms and phrases taken from this sys- 
tem given through Moses. Jesus never speaks of his 
own death save in these same words and phrases. 
When he speaks of "giving his life a ransom for 
many " (Mat. 20 : 28) ; when he said, " This is my blood 



340 THESE LESSONS STEPS OF PROGRESS. 

of the New Testament which is shed for many for the 
remission of sins " (Mat 26 : 28) ; when his great fore- 
runner speaks of him as " the Lamb of God who taketh 
away the sin of the world n (Jno. 1 : 29) ; — or Peter (1 
Eps. 2 : 24) as " bearing our sins in his own body on the 
tree ; " or Paul (2 Cor. 5 : 21) as being " made a sin-offer- 
ing for us that we might be made the righteousness of 
God in him/' it is simply impossible to disprove the 
reference of these terms and phrases to the Mosaic sys- 
tem — impossible to give them any other sense than 
that which is illustrated in the bloody death of the 
sin-offerings and burnt-offerings of that ancient law. 

Thus with bands which no sophistry can sever, the 
Old Testament and the New are bound together, and 
the atonement prefigured in the former is embodied 
and made perfect in the latter. The almost ceaseless 
blood-sheddings and blood-sprinklings of the former 
culminate in the latter in the one great scene of death- 
agony and blood on Calvary. The grand idea of expia- 
tory suffering — of the vicarious death of the innocent 
in place of the guilty, which ages of ceremonial sacrifice 
had been setting forth and working into the minds of 
all reverent worshipers, had prepared the way for 
Christ's disciples to understand the mystery of his 
bloody death and to teach the Christian world in the 
writings of the New Testament how the blood of Jesus 
" takes away sin" 

In closing our notice of this religious system, let us 
revert for a moment to the fact that all its important 
features were so many important steps of progress in the 
manifestation of God to man. These were lessons in 
advance of all that had preceded on that greatest of all 
questions — How shall man approach his Maker, and 

how shall he offer acceptable worship? That God 

deigned to come down and dwell with his obedient 
people is the precious truth which underlies all these 
provisions for his w r orship. How shall man treat this 
Heavenly Guest; how adjust himself to this pure and 
majestic Presence ; with what state of heart ; with what 
purity and cleanliness of person ; with what offerings 

and sacrifices and of what significance ? These are 

the points embraced in these great lessons taught in 
this religious system. The perpetual inculcation of 



THESE LESSONS STEPS OF PROGRESS. 341 

cleanliness and of conscientious, scrupulous care ; the 
practice of perpetual thanksgiving; but above all, the 
copious illustrations of the great idea of bloody sacrifice 
to take away sin ; — these have been already named as 
the salient features in this system, and all (it will be 
noticed) are points of progress. Bloody sacrifices and 
altars appear in the worship offered by Abraham, Noah, 
and even Abel. But how much more fully is their true 
import unfolded here ? Here is confession of sin on the 
part of the worshiper ; here is the symbolic transfer of 
sins by imposition of hands upon the head of the victim 
brought out to die : here is the sprinkling of his blood 
all round about the altar; upon the very mercy-seat 
and immediately in the presence of the Holy One who 
sat beneath the cherubim; upon the worshipers also 
gathered round the bloody altar: here are the special 
solemnities of the great day of atonement in which the 
whole sacrificial system culminated — all combining 
their significance to unfold the great idea of the vica- 
rious sufferings of an innocent victim in place of guilty 
men. 



CHAPTER XX. 



HISTOEIC EVENTS OF HEBEEW HISTORY FROM SINAI 
TO THE JORDAN. 

The Golden Calf. 

We dropped the thread of this history at Sinai to 
study with undivided attention the civil code of Moses 
and also the religious system. We now resume it. 

Moses tarried on the Mount forty days to receive from 
the Lord the civil statutes in detail and also all his in- 
structions in respect to the tabernacle, the priesthood, 
and the ritual. The time seemed long to the restive 
people. They became utterly impatient ; they lost faith 
in God and in Moses; fell back upon their previous 
Egyptian notions ; and consequently applied to Aaron, 
saying : " Up, make us gods which shall go before us ; 
for afe for this Moses — the man that brought us out of 
the land of Egypt — we wot not what has become of 
him." Aaron replied : " Break off and bring to me your 
golden ear-rings." Whether he hoped they would with- 
draw their request when they saw how much it was to 
cost them does not appear. But it does appear that 
their enthusiasm for idol gods was equal to this sacrifice 
of their golden ornaments. They brought them freely 
as Aaron had proposed, and he made of them a golden 
calf. Strangely enough, the people greeted this sense- 
less thing with the shout : " These be thy gods, Israel, 
which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt." What 
could this mean ? Did they really believe that this calf 
was the power that brought those plagues on Pharaoh ; 
that rolled away the waters of the Eed Sea ; bore them 
safely over, but hurled destruction on Pharaoh's host ? 
Did they see the Power that wrought all these wonders 
in this powerless calf? Or did they assume that the 
Invisible Power which achieved this work was well 

represented by this golden image? The ineffable 

folly of idolatry according to either notion staggers us ; 
we know not what to make of it. If the facts were not 
(342) 



THE GOLDEN CALF. 343 

so patent the world over and through all the ages of the 
race, it would be our first impulse to assume it all a 
fiction and to say — Men never could be so supremely 
silly and foolish as to suppose the Great God to be like 
a calf I or as to suppose that a calf, whether of gold or 
of flesh and blood, could be a God ! 

We are tempted to digress, perhaps too much, into a 
discussion of the philosophy of idolatry. On this point 
it must suffice to say that no philosophy of such a fact 
can ever be satisfactory save one that assumes and 
makes large account of human depravity — thus: Some 
recognition of superhuman power is inevitable ; it is 
in man's deepest convictions, and can not be got out. 
But men shrink from the near presence of a pure, sin- 
hating God. Any thing else is more endurable. Give 
us (they say) some God to worship who will not disturb 
our sinning, or some way of worshiping the Supreme 
which will at least put that pure, all-searching Eye 
farther off. And as to the reasonableness of such notions 
of God, there is only this to be said : Sin makes men 

think like fools ; sin makes men act like fools ! This 

philosophy of idolatry, and this only, touches bottom 

and must stand. In the case before us, it is noticeable 

that the people were charmed with this new worship, 
for they could sit down to eat and to drink and rise up 
to play ! A fine time they had of it. There was no 
troublesome sense of a pure, sin-hating God there. The 
question how this calf could be the same God who 
brought them out of Egypt was of the least possible 
concern to them. 

Aaron is swept along in the current of this mad in- 
fatuation. When he saw this calf, he built an altar 
before it and made proclamation : " To-morrow is a feast 
to the Lord." Full of heart for such a service " the 
people rose up early on the morrow and offered burnt- 
offerings and brought peace-offerings ; they sat down to 
eat and to drink, and rose up to play." 

A view of this scene from another stand-point follows 
next in the narrative. We are shown what transpired 
on the Mount where the Lord, Moses, and his servant 
Joshua were still engaged together. The God of Israel 
whose eyes are in every place, apprised Moses of what 
the people were doing. In words adapted to make Moses 
feel his personal responsibility, and perhaps to intimate 



344 THE INTERCESSION OF MOSES. 

that for himself he must disown such a people, he 
said — "Go, get thee down, for thy people, whom thou 
broughtest out of the land of Egypt have corrupted them- 
selves." They have made and are now worshiping a 
golden calf as the God that brought them out of Egypt. 

The Lord closed with a proposal which was in 

many points of view intensely trying to Moses; viz. 
that Moses should suffer the Lord to consume this cor- 
rupt people. Then he would make the posterity of 

Moses a great nation, in place of rejected Israel. Did 

the Lord say this to prove Moses in the line of personal 
pride ? However this may have been, the result was 
morally sublime. The temptation (if we may call it 
such) made no impression. Moses passes it by as a 
thing not to be thought of. The Lord seemed to antic- 
ipate that Moses would pray for the people, and there- 
fore said — " Let me alone that my wrath may wax hot 

against them and that I may consume them." Not 

deterred a moment by this, " Moses besought the Lord 
his God and said : Why doth thy wrath wax hot 
against thy people [not merely " my people "] which 
Thou [not I] hast brought forth out of the land of 
Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand"? 
He boldly argues the case : Why, Lord, shouldest thou 
give occasion to the Egyptians to say that thou 
broughtest forth this people only to slay them in the 
mountains and consume them from the face of the 
earth ? What will be said of thy solemn oath to Abra- 
ham to multiply his seed as the stars and to give them 
Canaan? How will these things bear upon thine own 
glory before earth and heaven ? 

This is a most remarkable case of prayer. Was ever 
mortal more bold and more persistent, despite of all the 
Lord had said which seemed to shut the door and bar 
off all entreaty ? Yet Moses prevailed, and it does not 
appear that the Lord rebuked him for his persistence 
or for his boldness. It is simply said — " The Lord re- 
pented of the evil which he thought to do unto his 

people." This point being so far gained, Moses must 

go down to the people. With the two stone tablets of 
the law in hand and Joshua by his side, he descends 
the mount. Joshua's ear first caught the sound from 
the camp. His military antecedents suggest to him a 
a battle : " There is a noise of war in the camp." With 



THE INTERCESSION OF MOSES. 345 

juster discrimination Moses replies: "It is not the 
shout of victors; it is not the outcry of the vanquished; 
but it is the voice of song that I hear." They come 
within sight — and true enough — there was the calf-god, 
and the people were dancing and singing around it 
with wild, mad enthusiasm. What a scene to Moses! 
How is his soul fired with holy indignation ! He casts 
to the earth the two tablets and breaks them at the 
foot of the mount. Next, he demolishes the calf; grinds 
it to powder; mixes it with water and compels the 
people to drink it. A million of men are in dismay 

before him — all powerless to resist. He turns to 

Aaron, his elder brother, to rebuke him. Aaron's de- 
fense is both tame and lame, as that of a man thor- 
oughly ashamed of himself. " Thou knowest the people, 
bent on mischief. They beset me to make them a calf; 
I told them to bring forward their gold; they did so. 
I threw it into the fire — and the calf made itself! 

The more vital movement followed. Moses took his 
stand in the gate of the camp and cried aloud : " Who 
is on the Lord's side? Let him come over to me." 
The sons of Levi, his tribal brethren, responded to the 
call and came. He bade them take every man his 
sword and pass to and fro through the camp, cutting 
down every man they met. There fell that day three 
thousand. The sin called for some fearful visitation 
of God's displeasure — something that should impress 
the whole people with a sense of God's irrepressible 
indignation. 

Thus closed this fearful day. After one night's re- 
flection, Moses convenes the people, brings their great 
sin before them again, and says — " I will go up before 
the Lord; perhaps I may make atonement for your 
sin." His prayer is on record — short, but full of mean- 
ing. "Oh, this people have sinned a great sin and 
have made them gods of gold. Yet now, if thou wilt 
forgive their sin : — and if not, blot me, I pray thee out 

of thy book which thou hast written." To which 

the Lord answers: "Whosoever hath sinned against 
me, him will I blot out" of my book." 

The prayer of Moses (v. 32) should be read with a 
strong emphasis on the word "«f," making it equiva- 
lent to that : If thou wilt forgive their sin, all will 
be well. that thou wouldest ! If not, life is nothing 



346 THE LORD REVEALS HIS NAME AND GLORY. 

to me ; blot me out from the book of the living. Let 

me rather die than live any longer. The primary 

meaning of this u book" of life is a register of living 
men — with reference to the earthly life, of this world 
only and not of the next. It is not to be taken here as 
including the future life. The Lord's final answer 
spares the national life, but subjects the people yet to 
visitations of judgment for this terrible sin. 

Though the main point seemed to be gained — God 
could consent to spare the nation — yet a qualifying 
condition troubled Moses exceedingly. The Lord said — 
I will send an angel before thee to drive out the Canaan- 
ite ; but I will not go up in the midst of thee myself, 
for thou art a stiff-necked people, lest I consume thee 
in the way. It can not be safe for so wayward a people 
to have with them the personal presence of a God so 

pure and so sin-hating. In the settlement of this 

grave matter, Moses was permitted to come very near 
to the God of Israel, to talk with him as a man talks 
with his friend. Moses said (in substance) : Thou hast 
made me responsible to lead this people onward to 
Canaan; but thou hast not told me whom thou wilt 
send 'with me. Yet thou hast very kindly said, " I know 
thee by name, and thou hast found grace in my sight." 
If this be so, show me now thy way that I may know 
thee; that I may find grace in thy sight; and do not 
call this people mine, but consider them thine. Let me 
know what thy way of dealing with me and with thy 
people is to be and what I may depend upon in this 
thing. The Lord graciously answers : — " My pres- 
ence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest :" this 
rest being probably the promised rest of the nation in 
Canaan, and not merely rest in the sense of a satisfied 

mind exempt from harassing vexations. Moses 

promptly answers — " If thy presence go not with me, 
carry us not up hence." If thou art not going with us, 
let Canaan be given up and this whole enterprise be 
abandoned, for what can we do unless our own God be 
with us ? How have we ever been distinguished from 
other peoples on the face of the earth, save in this — 
that our God, the great, the pure, and the Holy One, 

has been personally present with us? The Lord 

graciously yields this point also. 

Moses has still one more request to make — the last 



THE LORD REVEALS HIS NAME AND GLORY. 347 

and perhaps the greatest : " I beseech thee, show me 
thy glory." Moses had seen the pillar of cloud and of 
fire ; more than this, he had been on Mt. Sinai where 
the August Presence was so grand and awful that he 
said — " I do exceedingly fear and quake ;" and just at 
this time we are told that the cloudy pillar descended 
and stood at the very door of Moses' tent, and the Lord 
talked with Moses, speaking unto him face to face as 
a man speaketh unto his friend (Ex. 33 : 9, 11). But 
this last request asks for something yet more deep and 
spiritual. These recent developments have made on 
the mind of Moses a painful impression that after all 
he does not yet know God fully— does not really under- 
stand him; and therefore needs to know him more 
thoroughly. Where is the line between his mercy and 
his wrath ? How much can he bear in his covenant 
people, and at what point will his mercy surely turn 
to consuming judgment ? When and on what grounds 
will he forgive his sinning people and blot out their 

iniquities? These are the points in the character 

of God which he feels that he must know, and which 
he expresses under the one most comprehensive word — 
" thy glory." They belong to the depths of the divine 
nature. 

This inquisitive spirit is prompted by one supreme 
desire in the heart of Moses, viz. to do faithfully and 
well the work to which God has called him, and to learn 
how to bear himself toward God under these responsi- 
bilities. Therefore the Lord yields here also, the re- 
quest being not only reasonable but pleasing to him ; 
for, does not the Lord always delight to meet those who 
long to see more of his glory, especially when the deep- 
est aim and purpose of this longing culminate in the 
passion to do the Lord's work more perfectly ? No- 
ticeably, the Lord's answer chooses a new word. He 
does not say — Yes, my servant Moses, I will show thee 
my "glory"; but this: "I will make all my goodness 
pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the 
Lord before thee." This is not by any means an eva- 
sion of the main question, for the Lord comes squarely 
up to the very point that labors in the mind of his 
servant Moses — the mutual relations in the character 
and ways of God between his mercies and his justice ; 
his compassion toward his children, and his fearful 



348 THE LORD REVEALS HIS NAME AND GLORY. 

severity to the guilty whom no mercy can hold to obe- 
dience; whom nothing can move but terrific judg- 
ments. It can scarcely be necessary to explain the 

usage of the word " name" as spoken of God : " I will 
proclaim the name of the Lord before thee." We have 
become familiar with the fact that in the Scriptures, 
the name (usually) does more than merely distinguish 
one individual from another (as in our common par- 
lance), being significant of nature, of character, of some 
predominant quality^ It is not that God may be called 
the Lord, the Lord God, but that he is the Lord, i. e. 
the real Jehovah — forever the same, and forever faithful 
to his promises. To proclaim his name therefore is to 
proclaim his nature; to testify to his real character. 

The manner and circumstances of this proclamation 
in the case before us are altogether unique and strik- 
ing. The ground idea is that, in human relationships, 
we learn the character by seeing the man. We depend 
on the eye and the sense of sight above the testimony 
of any other sense, and we expect to see the character 
in the face. To " see the face" is, therefore, the most 
complete and satisfactory means of learning the char- 
acter—of knowing the man — that we can have under 
the limitations of our present mortal state. The lan- 
guage and the whole transaction before us rest on these 

simple facts of our present life. -The Lord said to 

Moses : "Thou canst not see my face; for there shall no 
man see me and live." To see the very face of God 
would imply a more full revelation of his ineffable 
glory than mortal man could bear. A softened mani- 
festation of those unutterable glories is all, therefore, 
that can be granted even to the man of God, Moses ; and 
this is expressively put by saying : " Thou shalt see my 
bach parts; ray face shall not be seen." This was the 
Lord's proposal : " Behold, there is a place by me, and 
thou shalt stand upon a rock ; and it shall come to pass 
while my glory passeth by that I will put thee in a 
cleft of the rock, and I will cover thee with my hand 
while I pass by : then I will take away my hand and 
thou shalt see my back parts, but my face shall not be 
seen" (Ex. 33 : 21-23). 

It will be noted that in this narrative Moses makes 
no attempt to describe the scenes of this visible mani- 
festation, or the impressions it made on his mind. 



CONDITIONS FOR THE FUTURE. 349 

Words are too weak for such a service. Those glorious 
views of God which sight may give, and which we may- 
assume that Moses obtained in this proposed manifesta- 
tion, each one must have for himself alone and not for 
another. They will come to all the Lord's true chil- 
dren in the day when they shall see even as they are 

seen and know as they are known. The matters 

which Moses does record at this point are, that the 
Lord bade him prepare two other stone tablets to re- 
place the broken and to appear with them the next 
morning on the top of the mount ; that he must come 
alone and let no other man be seen in all the mount, 
nor let any animal of the Hock or herd feed before the 
mount ; that then the Lord descended in the cloud and 
stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. 
The words of this proclamation are recorded : — " The 
Lord [the Jehovah], Jehovah God, merciful and gracious ; 
long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth; 
keeping mercy for thousands ; forgiving iniquity, trans- 
gression and sin, and that will by no means clear the 
guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the 
children and upon children's children unto the third 

and to the fourth generation." Profoundly awed by 

these words and by this impressive manifestation ; en- 
couraged by the prominence given in it to the ideas of 
mercy and loving-kindness, Moses made haste, and 
bowed his head to the earth and worshiped, and then 
lifted up his prayer — " If now I have found grace in 
thy sight, Lord, let my Lord, I pray thee, go among 
us (for it is a stiff-necked people) and pardon our in- 
iquity and our sin and take us for thine inheritance." 

The same points are prominent here as before (Ex. 

32: 11-13) — that God would forgive the great sin of the 
people ; that he would go among them again, and dwell 
in the midst of them; and that he would truly take 
and hold them as his own inheritance. Upon all these 
points the heart of Moses is intently set, and he brings 
them before God every time. The Lord responds — I 
renew my covenant ; I shall go on to work marvelously 
among this people. The revelations of my great name 
before them and before all the world by means of them, 
are only begun. I will go before this people to drive 
out the Canaanite; but this one thing I must insist 
upon: My people must wash out every stain of idol- 



350 EGYPTIAN INFLUENCE IN THIS CALF-WORSHIP. 

worship ; they must destroy all idol-altars, break down 
their images, cut down their groves, have no associ- 
ations with corrupt idol-worshipers ; worship no other 
than the one true and holy God, for the Lord whose 
name is Jealous is a jealous God. Other requirements 
follow as may be seen (Ex. 34) ; Moses fills out another 
forty days on the mount ; the law is again written on 
two tablets like the former ; Moses comes down with his 
face (unconsciously to himself) shining as if the re- 
flection of the more shining face of God still lingered 
upon it. When Aaron and all Israel saw this, they 
feared to come near him. Moses called to them (i. e. to 
come) ; Aaron and the rulers (not the people) came and 
Moses talked with them. Afterward all the people 
drew near and Moses rehearsed the recently revealed 
commandments of the Lord, putting a vail on his face 
while speaking with the people. This glory on his 
face was the sensible witness that he had been in very 
deed talking with the all-glorious God, and that it be- 
hooved them to accept him as God's authorized mes- 
senger. 

In tracing thus rapidly the general course of thought 
in these chapters (Ex. 32-34), I have aimed to bring 
out the salient points and the spirit of the transactions. 
Some things have been passed which it were well to 
return and examine more fully. 

This first great apostacy into idol-worship was doubt- 
less born of their Egyptian life. There they had seen 
the ox, the cow, and the calf made objects of worship. 
It is supposable that the leaders in this movement 
were of that " mixed multitude " who came out from 
Egypt with them (Ex. 12 : 38), and who seem to have 
led off in the lusting and murmuring at Taberah 
(Num. 11: 4). Neither of these facts — their having 
seen such worship in Egypt, nor their being seduced 
by the Egyptians among them — can at all excuse their 

sin. It admits of no excuse. Moses recites the main 

points of this case again (Deut. 9 : 8-21), omitting the 
special manifestation of God's name, but giving promi- 
nence to his own anxiety, not to say agony, on their 
behalf lest the Lord should indeed destroy them. " I 
fell down before the Lord as at the first forty days and 
forty nights ; I did neither eat bread nor drink water 



INCIDENTS CONNECTED WITH THE GOLDEN CALF. 351 

because of all your sin which ye had sinned in doing 
wickedly in the sight of the Lord to provoke him to 
anger (for I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure 
wherewith the Lord was wroth with you to destroy 
you)". He also speaks of his prayer for Aaron whose 

sin in this matter had been great (v. 20). How 

much this great apostacy impressed itself upon the na- 
tion's history and affected good men in after ages, may 
be seen in Ps. 106 : 19-23, and Acts 7 : 39-43, and 1 Cor. 
10:7. 

The fact that Moses burnt and pulverized the golden 
calf so that he might compel the people to drink it, 
shows him to have been profoundly skilled in the sci- 
ence of metallurgy. He has not told us what solvent 
he used, other than fire, for it was no part of his object 
to teach this art or to exhibit his skill therein. Few 
men have ever lived in any age who could have 
done it. 

The social and moral influence of this festival for idol- 
worship is expressively put by Moses : " The people sat 
down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play." As the 
subsequent narrative shows, here was revelry — dan- 
cing, shouting, and song. God was forgotten ; all true 
sense of his presence and indeed of his nature was 
ruled out by the very fact that they had exalted a 
golden calf into his place. By a law of human nature 
men become like the object they worship. Calf-wor- 
shipers go down to the level of the calf they worship. 
Alas ! would that they did not sink far lower in passion 
and in crime ! 

In Ex. 32 : 25 we read : " When Moses saw that the 
people were naked — (for Aaron had made them naked 
unto their shame among their enemies), then he took 
his stand in the gate of the camp and said, "Who is on 

the Lord's side? let him come unto me." Modern 

critics for the most part give the Hebrew words the 
sense, not of being naked, but of being cast loose, demor- 
alized, put into the state of being lawless, without restraint 
The principal verb occurs rarely ; it may of itself bear 
either sense above indicated. The sense " naked " does 
not well suit the context ; for in what sense did Aaron 
make them naked ? And how could their nakedness be 
a reason why Moses should send armed men among them 
to slay three thousand ? The other sense, therefore, 

16 



352 LESSONS FROM MOSES ON PRAYER. 

should be preferred. Aaron had utterly demoralized 
them. They were powerless, and only objects of scorn 
before their enemies. God had in wrath forsaken 
them. 

From Ex. 33 : 4-6 it appears that the people were 
mourning over the sad tidings that God refused to go 
with them to Canaan, and that they indicated their 
grief in part by leaving off their usual ornaments, as 
God had commanded them to do. In v. 6 our transla- 
tion reads, " Israel stripped themselves of their orna- 
ments by the Mount Horeb." The Hebrew favors the 
sense, "from Mt. Horeb" — i. e. from that point of their 
history and onward ; signifying that they gave this 
permanent indication of humility and shame for their 
great sin. Nothing could be more appropriate, since 
those ornaments of gold were strongly associated with 
their awful sin in the matter of the calf. It is pleasant 
to see that they were so prompt to give this expression 
of their sorrow and shame. 

In that most emphatic announcement of the name of 
the Lord (34 : 6, 7), we must note the reiteration of the 
ideas of mercy, grace, long-suffering, compassion, good- 
ness, truth — as if the leading purpose were to inspire 
hope and comfort in souls contrite and humble for sin. 
Solemn and awful words were indeed spoken of " visit- 
ing men for their iniquity ; " and not the fathers only 
but the children also by the laws of inevitable connec- 
tion between parent and offspring. Nationally and 
socially, the children in this nation must suffer for the 
sin of their parents. The smiting dead of three thou- 
sand guilty fathers left many thousand children orphans. 
If for the sins of the fathers God had dropped the na- 
tion at Horeb, where would have been their promised 
Canaan ? What could have been the lot of coming gen- 
erations of Israel but disaster — privation of good ; ac- 
cumulation of evil? That God should put so promi- 
nently in the fore-ground this feature in his threatened 
retribution implies his hope that he might touch the 
heart of fathers and mothers in this way when they 

were fearfully insensible to all other considerations. 

As to the bearing of this announcement of God's names 
upon the then pending question — What may the nation 
hope for from the God of their covenant ? we must sup- 
pose that it encouraged Moses greatly. He would say — 



LESSONS FROM MOSES ON PRAYER. 353 

Assuredly God would not put his mercies forward so 
sweetly, so richly, so in the front of all his manifesta- 
tions, if he had not some blessed thoughts of mercy for 
us. Let us trust his loving-kindness ! While we w T ill 
listen to his solemn words of warning against sin, we 
will believe that it is his purpose to forgive this great 
sin and to grant us still his gracious protecting pres- 
ence. So he presses his suit once more in prayer. 

Among the greatest lessons of this history are those 
that relate to prayer. The whole character of Moses as 
seen in this transaction is wonderfully pure and true. 
How unselfishly he casts away, as not to be thought of, 
the divine suggestion — " I will make of thee a great na- 
tion " ! With what solid grasp and singular tenacity 
did he hold fast to the great ideas of God's covenant 
with Abraham — to make this nation his own peculiar 
people ; to abide among them ; to manifest himself in 
works of power and grace, and get himself a great 
name in all the earth ! Shall God forget this covenant; 
abandon this people; drop them midway from Egypt 
to Canaan, and leave all the nations to exult in their 
ruin and to put it to the caprice or the impotence of 

Israel's God? Never. It is wonderful how Moses 

holds on upon these strong points in his case and the 
case of Israel ; how thoroughly he proves himself to 
have been raised up of God for the great mission of 
Israel's Leader and Advocate with God. With what 
boldness does he debate the case before the Lord and set 
forth his strong reasons — reasons, not of selfish sort, not 
looking so much to the human side as to the divine ; 
reasons that entered deeply into the greatest of all con- 
siderations — the honor of God before all the nations, and 
the success of his plans in making Israel his chosen 
people. As we search the annals of human history in 
vain to find a stronger case of power with God in prayer, 
so we must look far to find a case more instructive in 
regard to the proper attitude for praying souls before 
God, and the proper arguments to use in prayer. Moses 
seemed not so much pleading for himself or for his peo- 
ple, as for God. Therefore it was that his pleas, based 
on the revealed counsels of the Almighty and fully in 
sympathy with his designs and with his glory, took hold 
of the heart of Jehovah and could not be denied. 



354 TABEEAH AND KIBROTH-HATTAAVAH. 



The scenes of murmuring and lust ; Taberah and Kibroth- 
hattaavah. 

These transactions, recorded Num. 11, seem to have 
occurred soon after the people moved onward from 
Sinai. In the official record of the halting stations 
on their march from Egypt to Canaan (Num. 33), 

" Kibroth-hattaavah " is next after Sinai. The name 

Taberah does not designate a station, but simply indi- 
cates the remote quarter of the camp where the fire of 
the Lord broke forth upon the murmuring people, till- 
in answer to the prayer of Moses it was quenched. 

The particular ground of this murmuring is not stated. 
Probably it was the general hardships of their wilder- 
ness life ; a shrinking from the march into the depths 
of the desert, just then commenced. -In close con- 
nection follows an account of a more serious murmur- 
ing, begun by the " mixed multitude " of Egyptian and 
miscellaneous followers of whom we read Ex. 12 : 38, 
but into which the men of Israel were drawn. The 
ground of complaint was their food. They were tired 
of their manna and longed for the vegetables and fish 
of Egypt. At this point, as if to show how unreason- 
able their complaints were, Moses gives a full account 
of the manna, its appearance, the way of preparing it 
for food, and of its flavor. (See what is said on manna 

in Ex. 16.) -Moses heard the complaints of the 

people and was greatly displeased. Naturally he bore 
the case to God in prayer, but in the spirit of one 
whose endurance was overtaxed and whose nerves were 
but too sensitive to his burdens. Noticeably the Lord 
does not rebuke him, but very kindly provides relief 
by creating a council of seventy elders who shall help 
him to bear his responsibilities for the people. They 
were to be endowed with a measure of the same divine 
spirit which abode with him. Having received this 
spirit it is said (v. 25) that they " prophesied," i. e. ex- 
horted, spake under the divine influence, but added no 
more. This is obviously the sense of our Hebrew text; 
and not, as our English version has given it — " proph- 
esied and did not cease." If they did not cease, we 
might expect to hear more of what they said. But the 
word used by Moses is decisive. They simply prophe- 



MIRIAM AND AARON JEALOUS TOWARD MOSES. 355 

sied for once to indicate the presence of the spirit with 

them, and added no more. As to the complaining 

people, God answered their demands with such a sup- 
ply of flesh that the surfeit, by natural law or other- 
wise, brought upon the people a fearful plague from 
which many perished. The vast graveyard which re- 
ceived the dead gave name to this memorable station — 
The graves of lust, or the graves of the lustful ones. The 
Lord had brought up to them quails to cover the whole 
region about their camp for a day's journey (twenty 
miles) on every side to the depth of two cubits (three 

feet). The moral of the case is well put by the 

Psalmist : " He gave them their request, but sent lean- 
ness into their soul " (106 : 15) ; or as another has it : 
"He gave them their own desire. They were not es- 
tranged from their lust, for while their meat was yet in 
their mouth, the wrath of God came upon them and 
slew the fattest of them and smote down the chosen 
men of Israel " (Ps. 78 : 26-31). — There is danger of be- 
ing too demanding and persistent for the gratification of 
any appetite or passion, lest the blessing we demand 
may prove a curse. Let God's wisdom and not our own 
impulses be our guide, and rule our life. 

Miriam and Aaron jealous of the honor given to Moses. 

In Num. 12, we are told that Miriam and Aaron 
speak disparagingly of Moses because of his Ethiopian 
wife, jealous of the almost exclusive honor shown him 
by the Lord. "Hath the Lord indeed spoken by Moses 
only ? Hath he not spoken by us also ? " — Miriam seems 
to have been the moving spirit in this. She had no 
special love or even respect for her sister-in-law; but 
had more than enough of self-conceit and pride. Per- 
haps she thought of her prominence in the song on the 

hither shore of the Red Sea (Ex. 15). Remarkably 

we- find here this verse interposed : (" Now the man 
Moses was very meek, above all men who were upon 

the face of the earth.") The manner in which this 

is introduced favors the supposition that it came from 
some other and later hand, like the account of Moses' 
death (Deut. 34 : 5-12). Yet it is impossible either to 
prove or disprove this supposition. 

It is plain that Moses made no reply to what Miriam 



356 KADESH-BARNEA AND THE UNBELIEVING SPIES. 

said, but left the whole matter with God. His work 
was not of his own choosing ; his high position came to 
him unsought. The event showed that it was perfectly- 
safe for him to leave his fair name and his high position 
with the Lord. For the Lord soon interposed: "Moses 
is more than a prophet : to the prophet I make myself 
known in visions or speak in dreams ; but with my serv- 
ant Moses I speak mouth to mouth, and the very simil- 
itude of the Lord shall he behold : Wherefore then 
were ye not afraid to speak against my servant Moses " ? 

All suddenly Miriam is leprous, white as snow. 

The quick and trained eye of Aaron detects it, and he 
cries out to Moses for pardon and help. Moses, always 
the man of prayer, calls upon God in her behalf and is 
heard. After seven days' exclusion from the camp, she 
returns sound, and hopefully, a wiser and more humble 
woman. 

Kadesh-barnea and the Unbelieving Spies. 

In Num. 13 and 14 stands the record of a series of 
events of exceedingly vital moment to the children of 

Israel. By a route not definitely ascertainable at this 

distance of time, they had come (eleven days' journey 
Deut. 1 : 2) from Sinai to Kadesh-barnea which most 
critics concur in locating in the northern part of the 
wilderness of Paran, near " the mountain of the Amor- 
ites," and also near the southern border of the land of 
Canaan. Leaving the wilderness of Sinai (Num. 10: 
12, 13) "on the twentieth day of the second month of 
the second year" [from Egypt] ; spending at least one 
month (Num. 11 : 20, 21) at Kibroth-hattaavah, they 
were supposably about two years out from Egypt when 
the question came up the second time whether the 
people were prepared to march into the land of Canaan. 
On the former occasion, as we have seen (Ex. 13 : 17, 
18) the Lord decided this question at once, rejecting 
the short route to Canaan and heading their hosts 
through the wilderness, because, being then just from 
bondage in Egypt, they were in no condition, physic- 
ally or morally, to enter Canaan. Now at Kadesh 

the question comes up again. As the case is put by 
Moses (Deut. 1 : 22) it would seem that the people sug- 
gested the mission of the spies : " Ye came near unto 



KADESH-BARNEA AND THE UNBELIEVING SPIES. 357 

me, every one of you, and said — We will send men be- 
fore us and they shall search us out the land and bring 
us word again by what way we must go up and into 
what city we shall come. And the saying pleased me 
well, and I took twelve men," etc. But the more full 
account in Num. 13 ascribes the movement to the Lord 
himself: "The Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Send thou 
men that they may search the land of Canaan" (vs. 1, 2). 
This is probably the more exact account. The people 
however heartily concurred. Very wisely the ex- 
plorers designated were thoroughly representative men, 
" heads of the children of Israel," "every one a ruler 
among them." Thus selected, they would fairly repre- 
sent the moral tone of the people on the great point of 
faith or unbelief; and moreover were men reliable as 

judges of the country and of the people of Canaan. 

The points which they were to investigate and report 
were well defined : " To see the land, what it is ; 
whether good or bad; the people, whether strong or 
weak, few r or many ; what cities they dwell in; whether 
in tents or strongholds ; and whether the land be fat 
or lean ; and also" (a point of interest to men so long 
on the desert) " whether there be wood therein or not." 

In a tour of forty days they traversed Canaan to 

the very northern border and seem so far to have done 
their work well. It being the time of first ripe grapes, 
they brought a magnificent specimen cluster from 

Eshcol, so large as to be borne by two men. Their 

report made two strongly marked points — that the land 
was truly " flowing with milk and honey" — all in this 
respect that they could desire ; but on the other hand, 
ten of their number concurred in saying that the peo- 
ple were strong ; their cities walled and very great, and 
some of their warriors, men of Anak, giants of stature, 
in whose sight they were only as grasshoppers. Their 
conclusion was — "We be not able to go up against that 
people, for they are stronger than we" (Num. 13: 31). 

Two of the spies — Caleb representing Judah and 

Joshua of Ephraim — brought in a minority report, dif- 
fering totally in the one only vital point, viz. whether 
Israel were able to drive out the Canaanites and take 
possession of the land. Or, more fundamentally, they 
based their conviction upon their faith in God; while 
the men of the majority report seem to have made not 



358 KADESH-BARNEA AND THE UNBELIEVING SPIES. 

the least account of God's help in the case. Caleb and 
Joshua said — " The land is exceedingly good ; and if 
the Lord delight in us, then he will bring us into this 
land and give it to us ; only rebel not ye against the 
Lord, neither fear ye the people of the land, for they 
are bread for us ; their defense is departed from them, 

and the Lord is with us ; fear them not." Sad to say, 

these considerations fell powerless upon the hearts of 
the ten unbelieving spies, and also upon the mass of 
the people. "All the people murmured against Moses 
and Aaron ; the whole congregation said unto them : 
Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt, or 

would God we had died in this wilderness" ! They 

even proposed to " make themselves a captain and re- 
turn into Egypt"! It was inevitable that the Lord 

should feel himself dishonored and even insulted. 
" How long," said he, " will this people provoke me ? 
How long will it be ere they believe me for all the 
signs which I have showed among them"? And again, 
referring to what was most disheartening and cruel of 
all : " Those men who have seen my glory and my mir- 
acles which I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and 
have tempted me now these ten times, and have not 
obeyed my voice — they shall not see the land which I 
sware unto their fathers to give them." Ah, they had 
seen all the plagues on Egypt ; they had seen Pharaoh's 
proud host buried in the Red Sea; they had seen Am- 
alek smitten before Israel while the hands of prayer 
were upstayed before the Lord — and must all this go 
for nothing ? God had promised to give them Canaan ; 
could they not trust him? They had bound them- 
selves by most solemn covenant to follow him as their 
king ; and shall they go back upon this great covenant; 
make another captain ; and return to their old bondage 
in Egypt ? Alas, for such treachery ! Alas, that they 
will not believe in God; that they have no faith in 
his power to save ; and apparently no faith in his readi- 
ness to attempt it! 

Here again (as after the sin with the golden calf) 
the Lord proposes to Moses to smite this whole people 
with pestilence, and then make of his posterity a nation 
greater and mightier than they (Num. 14: 12). But 
in this case as in that, Moses listens not a moment to 
the proposal which might soem flattering to his ambi- 



THE UNBELIEVING SPIES. 359 

tion if he had any ; and turns his plea wholly to the 
point of God's glory before the nations : — What will 
they say of him if he abandons this whole people as if 
in despair ? It w T as well understood that he had prom- 
ised to bring them into Canaan ; what will they say if 
he fails to do it ? How will it bear upon the name and 
the fame of Almighty God if the nations are left to 
say — " Because the Lord was not able to bring this peo- 
ple into the land which he sware unto them, therefore 

he hath slain them in the wilderness." To this, Moses 

adds an appeal to that blessed name which the Lord had 
given him on the former occasion : — Let the power of 
my Lord be great according as thou hast spoken, say- 
ing : " The Lord is long-suffering and of great mercj r , 
forgiving iniquity and transgression. pardon thou 
the iniquity of this people according unto the greatness 
of thy mercy and as thou hast forgiven this people from 

Egypt until now." To this prayer the Lord promptly 

answers : " I have pardoned according to thy word ; but 
as truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the 
glory of the Lord " — (i. e. with the glory of his righteous 
justice) ; for of all those men who have seen my glory 
and my miracles in Egypt and in the wilderness, and 
yet have not believed in me at all, but have utterly dis- 
honored my name, not one shall enter into the land of 
promise. March them back into this great and dreary 
wilderness ; let them wander there forty years — as many 
years as they have spent days in searching out the land 
of Canaan. So let their judgment perpetually remind 
them of their sin, till all that unbelieving generation, 
old enough to bear moral responsibility for this unbe- 
lief, have fallen in the wilderness. Then their chil- 
dren who, they said, would fall before the sword of the 
Canaanites, shall go into the land, drive out those men 
of Canaan, and possess the goodly land of promise. 

The ten unbelieving spies perish at once by the plague 
before the wrath of God. The people were sorely dis- 
tressed by this decision. Some of them rushed at once 
to the mad extreme of marching unbidderf against the 
Canaanites — only to be smitten before them. 

Thus issued this sad case of strange, cruel unbelief. 
The conquest of Canaan was postponed almost forty 
years ; the generation of twenty years and over when 
they came out from Egypt were doomed to fruitless wan- 



360 REBELLION OF KORAH AND COMPANY. 

dering and an early death in the wilderness ; and that 
nation and the world had one more lesson on the wisdom 
of believing God, and on the infinite folly as well as 

guilt of refusing to believe and trust the Lord. Moses 

(in Deut. 1 : 19-46) gives a somewhat full recapitulation 
of these scenes. In Ps. 90 he puts in the form of sacred 
song his meditation and prayer on this sad yet most 
instructive event. 

The Rebellion of Korah and his Company. 

During the period of thirty-seven years intervening 
between the scenes at Kadesh last noted and the return 
to Kadesh in the last year of the wandering, one event 
of most signal and solemn moment occurred, viz. the 
rebellion of Korah and his company, recorded Num. 16, 
and referred to Num. 26 : 9-11. The leaders were Korah 
of the tribe of Levi, a near relative of Moses, and Dathan, 
Abiram, and On, of the tribe of Keuben ; — the former 
ambitious of the distinction enjoyed by Moses and 
Aaron, and doubtless believing himself at least equally 
capable and worthy ; the latter probably restive under 
the loss of that pre-eminence which was normally con- 
ceded to the first-born. Associated with them were two 
hundred and fifty leading men of the tribes, not other- 
wise distinctly designated. The movement thus as- 
sumed formidable proportions in the outset. They seem 
to have demanded that Moses and Aaron should retire 
from office and give place to themselves; or at least that 
they should resign and open the way for another election 

by the people. Moses wisely referred this matter at 

once to the Lord. Let him say who shall be the Leader 
of this people, and who shall come near before him as 
High Priest. Take you, said he, every man his censer 
and put fire therein, and come before the Lord. Let 

him pass upon this great question. Expostulating 

with Korah, he said, Should it not suffice you that God 
has given the whole tribe of Levi special responsibili- 
ties and honors? Why should ye murmur against 
Aaron because the Lord hath chosen him to lead in the 

most holy services ? The Reubenite faction, resisting 

the summons of Moses, stood off obstinately. With 
falsehood and insult they arraign Moses upon two grave 
charges : (a.) that he had brought them out of a land 



REBELLION OF KORAH AND COMPANY. 361 

of plenty to kill them in the wilderness ; and (b.) had 
utterly failed to bring them into a land of plenty as he 
had promised. And now, said they, "wilt thou put out 
the eyes of these men " ? Wilt thou dupe them and 

lead them on blind-fold to their utter ruin ? These 

were cutting charges. Moses was indignant. Appeal- 
ing to God he said, " Respect not thou their offering. I 
have not taken one ass from them, neither have I hurt 

one of them." Again Moses refers the decision of the 

great question to God. " The glory of the Lord appeared 
(we read) unto all the congregation." Inasmuch as the 
pillar of cloud and of fire was always visible to the peo- 
ple, we must suppose that on this occasion these words 

imply an unusual brilliancy — a blaze of glory. The 

first words from the August Presence indicated the di- 
vine purpose : " Stand ye aloof from those rebels ; sepa- 
rate yourselves from that whole congregation that I 
may consume them in a moment"! Suddenly Moses 
and Aaron are on their faces in supplication that God 
would stay his hand ; for they seem to have feared a 
most sweeping judgment. " Shall one man sin " (said 
they) a and wilt thou be wroth with all the congrega- 
tion " ? Promptly the Lord replied : Give orders to the 
people to withdraw from the tents of those leading rebels 
as they would escape their doom. They did so, leaving 
only the leaders and their households in their tents, 
awaiting the result — with what feelings and anticipa- 
tions we know not. Whether their impudent hardihood 
failed them and terror seized upon them, or whether 
they stood boldly or stupidly, awaiting the issue, noth- 
ing is said to show. With words inspired of God, 

Moses put the great question of God's choice of Leader 
upon its decision : " If those men die only the common 
death of mortals, the Lord hath not sent me; but if the 
Lord create a new creation [Heb.], i. e. work a miracle ; 
do something outside the course of nature ; if the earth 
open and swallow up those men alive and all that ap- 
pertain to them, then ye shall understand that these 
men have provoked the Lord." With not one mo- 
ment's delay, as the last word fell from his lips, the 
earth opened her mouth beneath their feet and they 
went down into that awful grave, and the earth closed 
over them ! They perished from among the congrega- 
tion. Their place was thenceforth vacant fa r ever! 






362 REBELLION OF KORAH AND COMPANY. 

Significantly it is added "all Israel that were round 
about them fled at the cry of them " — those shrieks of 
awful horror as they went down thrilled the whole peo- 
ple with terror and they fled from the scene ; for they 
said, " Lest the earth swallow up us also." 

It seems almost incredible that after such a scene of 
holy judgment on guilty rebels and of such consterna- 
tion upon the whole people, w r e read that on the morrow 
all the congregation murmured against Moses and Aaron, 
saying, " Ye have killed the people of the Lord." This, 
although their prayer had saved the masses of the peo- 
ple (v. 22) ; this, although the hand of God only and of 
no mortal man had wrought their destruction; this, 
although they had seen the whole transaction and fled 

in horror lest God swallow them up also ! It should 

not surprise us that the wrath of the Lord broke forth 
against them and the plague began. Moses cried to 
Aaron to take a censer with incense (the symbol of 
prayer) and run in among the people, waving his cen- 
ser between the living and the dead. Only so was the 
plague stayed. Yet fourteen thousand seven hundred 

fell in that fearful judgment. We are simply amazed 

at the perverseness and folly of many of that Hebrew 
people. " How often " and with what strange infatua- 
tion " did they provoke their God in the wilderness and 
grieve him in the desert " ! (Ps. 78 : 40.) 

The next chapter (Num. 17) records a special test to 
show which of the twelve tribes the Lord had chosen 
for the priesthood. Each tribe brought forward its sev- 
eral rod; Aaron's among them for the tribe of Levi. 
All were laid up before the Lord for one night only. 
In the morning Aaron's rod had blossomed and was 
bearing fruit; all the others were still dry sticks! 
Aaron's was thenceforth laid up in the most holy 
place — a perpetual memorial of God's choice of Aaron 
and his family for the priesthood. 

If it be asked by what means were Korah and his com- 
pany destroyed ? Were the common agencies of earth- 
quake employed in this case ? Or was the effect pro- 
duced by the divine fiat with no intervening force of 
imprisoned steam or explosive gases ? All I can reply 
is that the record says nothing on this point whatever. 
The agencies common in earthquakes have produced 



THE FIERY SERPENTS AND THE BRAZEN ONE. 363 

similar results often in the world's history. If the Lord 
saw fit he could have brought those agencies into action 
at precisely that moment ; or he might have produced 
the result miraculously with no intervening physical 
agency. It would be the Lord's hand in either case. 
The question which method God employed in this case 
is of no practical consequence whatever, and can never 
be decided save by a special revelation from himself. 

The events of history beginning with Num. 20 fall 
within the last of the forty years of wandering. This 
date is obtained indirectly from the death of Aaron 
which is recorded at the close of this chapter (vs. 22-29) 
and was connected with its events. It is definitely 
dated (Num. 33 : 38) in the fortieth year from Egypt on 
the first day of the fifth month. 

Of the murmuring for water during this sojourn in 
Kadesh and the sad rebuke of the Lord upon Moses, I 
have spoken in connection with the scenes at Rephidim 
(Ex.17: 1-7). 

The Fiery Serpents and the Brazen One. 

On the journey from Mt. Hor, compassing the land 
of Edom, the people became "much discouraged be- 
cause of the way." Travelers represent this route as 
abounding unusually in the discomforts of the desert. 
So Israel, weary, foot-sore, often suffering for water, not 
satisfied with their manna — murmured both against 
Moses and against God. The Lord sent fiery serpents 
among them: many were bitten and died. Burning 
serpents, the original calls them, with reference to the 
virulent poison of their bite and the fiery inflamma- 
tion which ensued. When Moses cried to the Lord for 
help, he was told to make a brazen serpent and suspend 
it high upon a pole, with the promise that any man, 
bitten of a serpent and looking up to this brazen one, 
shouldlive. Thus relief required as its condition this 
act of obedience and of faith toward God. 

The chief interest in this scene turns upon its ac- 
knowledged and undeniable character as a type of 
Christ. The type (resemblance) includes two distinct 
points : the lifting up; and the looking with its results 
of salvation. The evangelist John (3 : 14, 15) has them 






364 BALAK AND BALAAM. 

both : " As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilder- 
ness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up; that 
whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have 
eternal life." In two several cases Jesus spake of him- 
self as being " lifted up" with manifest reference to this 
historic scene in the wilderness. u When ye have lifted 
up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am he" 
(John 8 : 28). " And I, if I be lifted up from the earth 
will draw all men unto me." That his readers might 
not miss his meaning, the Evangelist explains : " This 
he said, signifying what death he should die" (Jn. 12 : 
32). Hence it is plain that Christ recognized the 
brazen serpent as a special type of himself to the point 

of the manner of his death. It is not less so in the 

second point— looking, the condition of living. Nothing 
can better represent the simple act of faith than look- 
ing. In looking, there is a turning of the mind toward 
the object; and there is some degree of expectation. 
There may be inexpressible longings. We must assume 
such longings in the case of the bitten, suffering, dying 

Israelite in the desert. So let sinners, stung with a 

terrible consciousness of guilt, borne down with a sense 
of want and woe and ruin, look with longing heart to 
the uplifted Lamb of God ; yea to Jesus considered as 
lifted up in the agonies of a vicarious death — dying for 
us that we might live. There is life in such looking! 

Balak and Balaam. 

In Num. 22-24 stands a very unique history. The 
two prominent characters are Balak, king of Moab, and 
Balaam, a renowned diviner, magician from the East. 

Moab, descended genealogically from Lot, was not 

among the doomed nations of Canaan, and had nothing 
to fear from the Israelites, provided only that she 
neither blocked their march nor seduced them into 
idol-worship. But Moab, both people and king, were 
" sore afraid of Israel because they were many," and 
because they had smitten Sihon of the Amorites and 
Og of Bashan, and had taken possession of their re- 
spective countries. The near proximity of such a host, 
marching and encamping with military precision, fed 
as no other people in that wilderness were ever fed; 
invincible in arms when their God was with them, 



BALAK AND BALAAM. 365 

and bearing the prestige of victory over Pharaoh and 
Amalek and the Amorites, was very naturally the occa- 
sion of no small alarm. Balak had seen and heard enough 
to convince him that the unseen power of some God was 
in these strange facts of their history. Unfortunately 
he did not know enough of the true God — the real 
God of Israel— to see that he could be none other than 
the One Infinite God, and therefore that resistance 
against him and his people was necessarily and utterly 
vain. His theology was doubtless of the type common 
among all the nations of antiquity, not blessed w T ith 
the light of revelation, viz. polytheism — gods in un- 
known numbers; each nation having its own, one or 
many — so that the contest for mastery between hostile 
nations was supposed to turn on the question which 

had the mightiest gods for their help. With this 

theology, Balak's policy was soon determined upon, viz. 
to send for the most renowned diviner of the ancient 
East, and match the prestige of his divination and of 
his curse against the blessings which the God of Is- 
rael was conferring upon his people. He understood 
well that the strength of Israel lay in the strength of 
her God. There was miracle there — superhuman aid 
coming in from a higher Power; and he had no idea 
of any thing which he could bring into the field against 
this save the most potent divination and magic. So he 
sent for Balaam to come and curse Israel. 

Concerning Balaam ; his residence, his previous and 
subsequent history, and his personal character, we have 
(outside of Num. 22-24) three references in the Old Tes- 
tament and the same number in the New ; viz. Num. 
31 : 8, and Deut. 23 : 4, and Josh. 13 : 22 :— 2 Pet. 2 : 15, 
16, and Jude 11, and Rev. 2 : 14. [The reference to both 
Balak and Balaam in Micah 6 : 5 adds nothing to their 
history.] These passages locate Balaam among the 
Midianites (Num. 31 : 8) ; in'Pethor (Num. 22 : 5) ; in 
Aram (Num. 23 : 7) ; and in Mesopotamia (Deut. 23 : 4). 
The Old Testament passages describe him as a sooth- 
sayer, practicing divination for reward. The New Tes- 
tament writers go to the bottom of his character and 
represent him as " loving the wages of unrighteousness; 
rebuked for his iniquity, the dumb ass, speaking with 
man's voice forbade the madness of the prophet " (2 
Pet. 2 : 15, 16). They speak of " going after the error 



366 BALAK AND BALAAM. 

of Balaam for reward " (Jude 11), and of him as one who 
" taught Balak to cast a stumbling-block before the 
children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols, and 

to commit fornication " (Rev. 2 : 14). Further, we 

are told (Num. 31 : 8 and Josh. 13 : 22) that he was 
found among the Midianites — enemies of God's people, 
and slain with the sword. 

The narrative by Moses (Num. 22-24) informs us very- 
minutely how Balak sent and brought Balaam to curse 
Israel, but failed in every endeavor ; how he plied him 
with munificent rewards and royal honors, but God 
would not let Balaam curse Israel, much as he might 
have wished to do so ; how Balak took his man to one 
mountain summit and another and another to show him 
this strange people, superstitiously hoping to break the 
spell of his purpose to bless; but all in vain. 

The history taken in whole shows that Balaam was 
a godless man ; that he exceedingly desired to please 
Balak and get his money, but that God would not let 
him. His is perhaps a solitary case to show that the 
Lord can (when he pleases) give some really prophetic 
visions to an ungodly man, and yet hold him so firmly 
under control that no harm can come of a wicked 
prophet. 

Some points in this case deserve special examination. 

In the passage (Num. 22 : 9-35) it appears that God 

positively forbade Balaam's going at all, yet that the 
second embassy, greater in number and of nobler rank 
and offering richer pay (v. 15) touched Balaam in his 
most sensitive point and made him long to go. So he 
told the men to tarry and he would see if he could get 
permission. According to the record (v. 20) the Lord 
said to him that night : " If the men come to call thee, 
rise up and go with them " ; yet the real meaning must 
be — If you will go, and if my prohibition avails nothing, 
go ; but do when there according to my word. Balaam 
was glad to go ; but " God's anger was kindled because 
he went " (v. 22) — a fact which shows very clearly what 
sort of permission God had given him. It can not well 
be doubted that Balaam knew he was going, contrary 
to the real mind of the Lord; for when did the Lord 
ever give a real permission, and then kindle into anger 
because his permission was accepted? Or when did he 
ever leave an honest inquirer after the way of duty to 



Balaam's prophecies. 367 

follow his supposed permission and then take such 
offense as in this case at what was in its purpose true 

obedience ? Yet while God always deals honestly 

with the honest inquirer after his will, he may some- 
times, both in word and in providence, let men who 
love their own will better than his take their course 
and bear their own responsibilities. Such I take to 
have been the Lord's policy in this case. 

The record sets forth that God used the ass on which 
Balaam rode to " rebuke with man's voice the madness 
of the prophet." The ass saw what Balaam's dull eye 
saw not — the angel of the Lord with drawn sword, 
heading him in his way — a fact strikingly suggestive 
of his dull vision in regard to comprehending the spirit 
of that apparent permission which the Lord gave him 
to go. Why did he not see that he was led dn, not by 
God's will, but by his own cupidity, his own intense 
and over-mastering covetousness? Alas for him; the 
eye of his ass could see w T hat his cultured intellect 
could not discern — that God was squarely against him. 
It was moreover fully the Lord's purpose, if Balaam 
would go, to hold him back from Balak's influence and 
compel him to bless Israel. This renewed, special 
charge on this point seems to have been one object in this 
remarkable meeting of the angel, Balaam and his ass. 

Does any one ask — How could an ass speak with man's 
voice ? Were real words uttered, words which any other 
ears within hearing could have heard as well as Ba- 
laam's ? Or was it simply a miraculous sensation upon 
his ear, having no cause whatever in the mouth of the 
ass ? 1 answer : It is of small avail to push such in- 
quiries. We can say wisely but two things : — (a.) That 
God could work a miracle as easily in one of these ways 
as in the other: — and (b.) Therefore the method which 
the description most naturally suggests is the most 
probable ; viz. that the ass spake audible words, and 
Balaam heard them as men are wont to hear words 
audibly spoken. 

The points of real prophecy in Balaam's visions 
should be noticed. 

Observe that in each case, before Balaam inquired of 
God he directed Balak to prepare seven altars and to 
offer upon each one bullock and one ram. The object 



368 Balaam's prophecies. 

in this seems to have been to propitiate the Lord and 
secure his favorable consideration. It is remarkable 
that Balaam, coming from the region of the Euphrates, 
should have these ideas as to the sacrifice of clean ani- 
mals. The fact seems to show that the idea of animal 
sacrifices was revealed to the race in its infancy and 
that it prevailed extensively over the Eastern world. 

The offerings having been made, Balaam retired to 
"an high place" (23: 3) as our version puts it, but 
really to a hill of bare, naked summit to await the 
Lord's presence and word there. [Such a summit was 
chosen for its range of view]. The Lord came and 
gave him his word for Balak, put thus : " Balak, the 
king of Moab, hath brought me from Aram, out of the 
mountains of the East, saying : i Come, curse me, Jacob; 
come, defy [in the sense only of curse, maledict] Israel. 
How shall I curse whom God hath not cursed? Or 
how shall I defy whom God hath not defied " ? [How 
can I gainsay the Almighty ; how put my word against 
his ? Balak asks this of me : I have no power to do it]. 

" From the top of the rocks I see him, and from the 

hills I behold him: lo! the people shall dwell alone 

and .shall not be reckoned among the nations.' 1 

From his naked mountain top Balaam saw their en- 
campment spread out before him; there they were, a 
peculiar, secluded people, having neither political, 
social, or religious connection with any other nation 
under heaven. In this most salient feature of their 
case Balaam saw a symbol of their whole future his- 
tory — dwelling alone, a scattered people, never reck- 
oned as being of or like any other nation of the earth. 

Their great numbers also were prophetic of their 

prosperous future : " Who can count the dust of Jacob, 
and the number of the fourth part of Israel " ? — the ref- 
erence to a " fourth part" coming of the fact that their 

encampment was in four parts, three tribes to each. 

His closing words are weighty : " Let me die the death 

of the righteous, and let my last end be like his." 

In interpreting these words I can by no means assent 
to the view of many commentators (largely German) 
who suppose Balaam had no ideas of a happy future 
life, it being as they maintain far too early in the 
progress of religious thought for any such ideas. They 
therefore restrict his meaning to a happy earthly life, 



Balaam's prayer. 369 

prosperous even to its natural end in death. 1 have 

no faith in such interpretations. They do not come by 
any fair construction from the text. What Balaam 
said was: "Let my soul die the death of the righteous, 
and let my after destiny be like his." After destiny — 
the afterpart of my existence, is the legitimate sense of 

the word here used. Besides, to pray that I may die 

of the same disease, at the same age, amid the same 
surroundings, as the righteous, is very tame, is a very 
insignificant blessing at best, and no sensible man 
could put his soul very earnestly into such a prayer. 
I see no reason why we should emasculate the prayer 
even of a Balaam in this style. Let us rather say that 
he prayed like one " whose eyes were open ; who had 
heard the words of God and knew the knowledge of the 
most High and saw the vision of the Almighty " (24 : 

15, 16) as he himself said. As to toning down the 

sense of his words because their Christian construction 
would be so far in advance of the age, I can not accept 
the assumed fact that thay were in advance of the age. 
I can not believe that Enoch, " walking with God" and 
translated to heaven knew nothing of heaven until he 
found himself there; or that Noah whose faith and 
whose preaching of righteousness breasted the wicked- 
ness of that whole generation had no thoughts as to the 
blessed world to come ; nor that Abraham's faith was 
limited to the hills and to the corn and wine of Canaan 
and had never an outlook of longing desire and assured 
hope of a " better country even an heavenly one " (Heb. 
11 : 16) ; nor that Moses, " esteeming reproach for 
Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt," had 
no " respect to the [future] recompense of reward." The 
writer to the Hebrews reasons far better than the Neo- 
logical critics as to the faith and the hopes of those glo- 
rious patriarchs. I find my sense of fitness and my 
convictions of truth far better met in his reasoning 
than in their speculations. 

Let it be noted that Balaam spake as one versed in 
moral distinctions. He understood that the blessed fu- 
ture life falls to the lot, not of the wicked but of the 
righteous. When a man comes so near to God as he 
seems to have done in these hours, this distinction 

must be seen and felt. That this most appropriate 

prayer should have proved in his case utterly unavail- 






370 Balaam's prophecies. 

ing is a sad and mournful fact to which we must give 
some attention in its place. 

Balak was by no means pleased with Balaam's " par- 
able." Indeed he retorts sharply: "What hast thou 
done to me? I sent for thee and was to pay thee to 
curse that people, and now thou hast blessed them al- 
together" — with blessings and nothing else. But 

Balak proposes to try again. Perhaps if the great 
soothsayer shall see them from the top of Pisgah, he 
may get a different view and may utter the much de- 
sired imprecation upon them. The same process is 
gone through, of burnt-offerings and of withdrawing for 
a private interview with God; after which Balak 
eagerly inquires : " What has the Lord spoken " now ? 
Has he changed his mind ? Has he given you leave to 

curse the Hebrew people? The answer is pertinent 

and very decided, but not any more to his mind than 
the former : — " God is not a man that he should lie, nor 
the son of man that he should repent. Hath he' said, 
and shall he not do it ? or hath he spoken, and shall he 
not make it good ? Behold, I have received command- 
ment to bless ; and he hath blessed, and I can not re- 
verse it. He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither 
hath he seen perverseness in Israel ; the Lord his God 
is with him, and the shout of a king is among them. 
God brought them out of Egypt; he has as it were the 
strength of a unicorn. Surely there is no enchantment 
against Jacob, neither is there any divination against 
Israel; according to this time it shall be said of Jacob 
and of Israel, What hath God wrought ? Behold, the 
people shall rise up as a great lion, and lift up himself 
as a young lion ; he shall not lie down until he eat of 
the prey, and drink the blood of the slain " (Num. 23 : 
19-24). 

At this point of time Israel was on the threshold of 
Canaan. Sihon and Og had fallen. The spirit of a 
pure and vigorous faith in God was never more thor- 
oughly national than in this generation. As between 
Moab and Israel, the contrast was never greater. God's 
people as seen by his prophetic eye were on the eve of 
sublime victories. No enchantment or divination could 
have force against them. That was the era in their 
history when it might fitly become a standing exclama- 
tion :— « What hath God wrought" ? 



Balaam's prophecies. 371 

Worse and worse for Balak. Curiously his next ef- 
fort is to shut Balaam's mouth altogether. Since he 
can not get from him curses against Israel, he begs him 
to hold still and not bless them. " Neither curse them 

at all, nor bless them at all." Balaam replied: "Did 

I not say to thee, All that the Lord speaketh, that I 

must do"? But Balak has not yet lost all hope. 

Perhaps it was of the Lord rather than of his hope how- 
ever that he is in for another trial — this time " on the 
top of Peor that looketh toward Jeshimon." Great 
faith he must have had in the prestige of new points 

of vision — of other mountain tops. The altars are 

set up; the bullocks and rams are offered as before. 
But in one respect the course of events changes. 
" When Balaam saw that it pleased the Lord to bless 
Israel, he went not as at other times to seek for en- 
chantments, but set his face toward the wilderness f — 
which seems to imply that on the two former occasions 
he had pursued his usual methods of divination to ob- 
tain messages from the spirit-world, but now changed 
his course, and simply turned his face toward the wil- 
derness where the camp of Israel lay in full view before 
him. Now w r e read, not that the Lord " met him" and 
"put a word into his mouth" (Num. 23: 4, 5, 16), but 
that "the Spirit of God came upon him," giving him 
prophetic visions in manner quite different from the 
preceding. His spiritual eye was now opened; what 
his natural eye had just seen as he set his face toward 
the wilderness (the camp of Israel), led his thought in 
these spiritual visions of Israel's glorious future, and 
his imagery naturally came from the scenes still fresh 
in his mind. " How goodly are thy tents, Jacob, and 
thy tabernacles, Israel" ! Exalted be thy kingdom ; 
glorious thy king ! His own great God brought him 
up from Egypt ; befriends him still ; will give him as- 
sured victory over all enemies in his own time ! Blessed 
be all w T ho bless thee ; cursed be all w T ho curse thee ! 

Balak is terribly enraged and bids Balaam flee and 
begone. Balaam with apparent mildness and undis- 
turbed equanimity proposes to give Balak some further 
prophetic views of what Israel should do to Moab in 
the coming days. Again " he takes up his parable :" 
" I shall see him, but not now ; I shall behold him, but 
not nigh : there shall come a star out of Jacob and a 



372 



Balaam's prophecies. 



scepter shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite the cor- 
ners of Moab, and destroy all the children of Sheth" 
(v. 17). m 

Who is "the star" and "the scepter" of this prophecy? 

The leading thought of the passage (vs. 17-19) and 

indeed of the entire prophecy to the end of verse 24 is 
the supremacy of Israel, and the fall of all powers hostile 
to Israel and to Israel's God. The key-note is in the 
words : " Out of Jacob shall come he that shall have domin- 
ion" The prophetic future (as usual) is built upon the 
visible present, or perhaps more precisely, springs out 
of it — is suggested by it, and takes its phraseology and 
costume from it. The Lord forces the truth upon Ba- 
laam's soul that this Israel whom he was called out 
from his Eastern home to curse could not be cursed to 
any purpose by any earthly divination or power because 
they were God's own people, and it was his fixed pur- 
pose to bless them. To impress this great truth the 
more deeply, the Lord reveals to him in prophetic 
vision that this present fact is not transient but des- 
tined to reach into the remote future ; that it is in- 
deed only a beginning of their supremacy — a pledge of 
a far more sovereign ascendency, to be manifested in 

future ages. With this view of the spirit of the 

prophecy, we must find here, not merely David in whom 
as the first conqueror of Moab and of Edom (2 Sam. 8 : 
2, 12, 14) these words receive the first palpable install- 
ment of their meaning ; but yet more surely that greater 
Son of David whose scepter is to rule the nations with 
a rod of iron. 

That this broad construction is the true one will ap- 
pear yet more fully when we compare the use of the 
word " scepter" here with Jacob's use of it (Gen. 49 : 10); 
the "star" here with the "star in the East" (Matt. 
2: 1) seen by other wise men [magicians] from Ba- 
laam's own country ; and not least, the fact that Edom 
and Seir became in the usage of later prophets sym- 
bolic names for the declared and malign enemies of 

Christ's kingdom (See Isa. 34). "He shall smite the 

corners;" better the two sides of Moab, i. e. Moab from 
side to side, through and through, laying waste her 
whole country. The word "Sheth" ("all the chil- 
dren of Sheth") seems to be used as a common, not a 
proper noun, the sense being — all the sons of tumult — 



Balaam's prophecies. 373 

all the men of war and strife. Her war-power he shall 
utterly break down. Edom and Seir — two names for 
one and the same kingdom, often affiliated with Moab, 
shall become the possession of their enemies and Israel 
shall outmaster them through her valor, and yet more 
through the might of her God — first fulfilled by David 
(2 Sam. 8 : 14). 

Of Amalek he said: Amalek was first among the 
nations to assail Israel (Ex. 17 : 8-16) ; her end shall be 
utter annihilation. (See the notice of Amalek on Ex. 17). 

Verses 21, 22, spoken of the Kenites, of whom Jethro 
and Hobab were the earliest representatives, are not 
without difficulties, yet their history places them in 
marked contrast w r ith Amalek — friends, not enemies of 
Israel; and therefore suggests— not to say demands, a con- 
trasted prophetic destin}^. Placing themselves on the 
side of Israel, their dwelling-place w r as strong; their nest 
in the rocks. Keil translates the passage — " Durable is 
thy dwelling-place, and thy nest laid upon the rock; 
for should Kain [the Kenite] be destroyed until As- 
shur shall carry thee captive"? — the question in his 
view having the force of a negative : The Kenite shall 
not be destroyed, etc. But it is not quite clear that the 
original words will bear this construction. It is how r - 
ever certain that the prophecy assures the Kenites, as 
friends of Israel, of long-continued prosperity. 

Again Balaam " takes up his parable/' forcibly im- 
pressed with the fearful judgments God would send 
upon the enemies of Israel: "Who shall endure the 
day of such judgments on the guilty foes of God? 
Great powers from the West [ships of Chittim] shall 
sweep over the ancient Eastern empires and level them 
with the dust ; and God will stand before the nations 
far down the ages as one mighty to protect his people 
and to overwhelm their enemies." 

Balaam's oracles are expressed in the purest style of 
Hebrew poetry — such as few can read without a sense 
of its beauty and majesty. If read with a present 
sense of the moral status of this prince of diviners — of 
the conflict in his soul between the love of riches and 
honor on the one hand and some regard to the high be- 
hests of the Almighty on the other, we can not well 
suppress a feeling of sadness that one so gifted by na- 
ture and so favored of God with prophetic revelations, 






374 Balaam's prophecies and end. 

should, despite of all, have yet succumbed to the do- 
minion of the baser impulses of his soul. His final 
record is dark and distressing. "He taught Balak to 
cast a stumbling-block before Israel" and drew them 
into idolatry and fornication (Rev. 2 : 14 and Num. 25). 
He cast in his lot with the Midianites, and (apparently) 
counseled them into the same infernal policy. Hence 
when the Lord in self-defense hurled down the sword 
of his people upon Midian and five of her kings fell, 
Balaam the son of Beor also was slain (Num. 31 : 1-8). 
Thus he who so plaintively yet so pertinently prayed — 
" Let me die the death of the righteous," met the death 
of the wicked. He had seen reason enough for the 
prayer : " Let my last end be like his " ; and yet he 
"died as the fool dieth" — in arms against Almighty 
God. While in imagination and intellect he might 
have taken rank with the noblest of earth's sons, yet 
through the baseness of his impulses and the greed of a 
covetous soul, he chose his rank among the meanest 
and utterly missed the immortality which seemed at 
one moment so nearly in his grasp ! For awhile God 
held him to the utterance of lofty thought, and ap- 
parently of pure and resolute purpose. But no sooner 
was the Lord's restraining hand lifted off than Balaam 
slumped into the mire of his selfish, covetous nature 
and went fast " to his own place " ! 

The question has been raised (more curious than use- 
ful) how Moses and the archives of Israel came into 
possession of these prophecies of Balaam. In answer it 
has been suggested that, failing to get the pay he ex- 
pected from Balak, Balaam went to Moses and laid be- 
fore him the contents of these chapters (Num. 22-24) 
with the hope of ample reward (which his covetous 
heart was loth to forego) ; but failing here also, left in 
disgust ; threw himself into the arms of Moab and Mid- 
ian ; retaliated with selfish malignity upon Israel and 
Israel's God, and of course hurried himself swiftly to his 

final doom. Let his example never cease to be a 

warning ! 



CHAPTER XXI. 



THE LAST FOUR BOOKS OF THE PENTATEUCH: THEIR 
METHOD OF ARRANGEMENT AND SUBJECT-MATTER. 

The manner in which, the last four of the five books 
of Moses are made up is peculiar and should have a mo- 
ment's special attention. Their striking peculiarity is 
the blending of matters pertaining to the religious 
system, to the civil code, and to the national history 
with no well defined order or method — the historic 
facts taking their place probably as they occurred and 
came before the writer, and the other topics being ar- 
ranged quite miscellaneously. This method obviously 
indicates that the writer was not an author by profes- 
sion — a mere writer and nothing else ; but one who was 
pressed with the cares and burdens of public office; 
bearing the chief responsibilities for the constitution 
of the religious system with its elaborate ritual ob- 
servances ; for the civil code — its exact record and its 
judicial administration; and for the general govern- 
ment of the people — quelling disturbances ; answering 
their complaints ; supplying their wants ; guiding their 
desert march, and directing their wars in defense 
against assailants. These books answer so perfectly to 
the circumstances of Moses as to leave no rational 
doubt that he was their author. Incidentally and most 
inadvertently they write out his daily history, showing 
us how he was occupied during those years when the 
events he narrates were transpiring. For the most 
part the record in these four books pertains to the first 
two years after Moses entered upon his great mission 
and the last two years before his death. There was a 
long interval between these periods of which nothing 
special is said. 

Passing the first twenty chapters of Exodus which 
are history and follow the natural order of the events ; 
and passing also the thrilling and solemn scenes of 
Sinai — the great work of Moses was to receive and 
record the statutes of the civil code, and the directions 
IT (375) 



376 LEVITICUS. 

respecting their religious system, including the con- 
struction of the tabernacle ; the services of the priests 
and Levites ; the sacred festivals, and the whole ritual 
of worship. We are told how the long sessions of Moses 
with the Lord on the Mount were interrupted (Ex. 32- 
34) by the sin of the people in the matter of the golden 
calf; after which the record of the tabernacle — its 
construction, etc., is resumed and continued to the 
close of Exodus. 

Leviticus, takes its name from Levi whose tribe fur- 
nished the line of priests and the servants for all the 
religious ritual. The first nine chapters record ritual 
observances and sacrifices ; then the death of Nadab and 
Abihu, occurring, is recorded in its chronological place 
(chap. 10) ; after which the author resumes his main 
subject — things clean and unclean ; purifications ; the 
case of leprosy, etc. In connection with the consecra- 
tion of the High Priest and his duties, we have (chap. 
16) the very interesting description of the great day of 
atonement. Statutes of a civil character are inter- 
spersed with those which are religious (chap. 19, and 20, 
and 24) ; the great feasts are described (chap. 23) ; the 
Sabbatic year and the Jubilee (chap. 25) ; a chapter of 
moral warnings and admonitions (26) ; closing with one 
on special vows and consecrations (27). 

The book of Numbers is named from the theme of its 
first two chapters — the census of the tribes. Another 
census was made during the last year of their wander- 
ing, viz. on the plains of Moab (chap. 26). It has also 
an itinerary of the journeyings of the people during 
their entire wilderness life (33). Several chapters are 
devoted to the religious ritual (none to the civil code) ; 
and several (more than in Leviticus) to historic events; 
e. g. the murmuring and the consequent plague at Ta- 
berah and Kibroth-hattaavah (chap. 11) ; the envy and 
sedition of Miriam (chap. 12) ; the case of the spies and 
the doom of the unbelieving (13 and 14) ; Korah and 
his doom (16). Then passing over to the last year of 
the wandering, we have the scenes at Kadesh — the mur- 
muring for water and the sin of Moses for which God 
forbade his entering Canaan (20) ; a conflict of arms 
with Arad the Canaanite; the fiery serpents ; the over- 
throw of Sihon and Og (21) ; Balaam and his prophecies 



DEUTERONOMY J SUBJECT-MATTER. 377 

(22-24) ; and other matters of miscellaneous character 
(25-36). 

Deuteronomy — the name meaning the second law, 
i. e. the law repeated — takes this name from the fact 
that the book repeats portions of the civil code and also 
of the religious system. It also gives a resume (a brief 
summary) of the leading historical events of the Exo- 
dus, of Sinai, of the golden calf, and of the murmurings 
of the fathers in the early years of their wanderings. 
This book was manifestly written within the last one 
or two years of Moses' life, when the scenes of the desert 
wandering were drawing to a close. Moses stood before 
the people, almost the only old man of the nation at the 
age of one hundred and twenty years, while all the rest 
(Caleb and Joshua excepted) were under twenty when 
they came out of Egypt, and not exceeding sixty at the 
writing of this book. u The fathers — where were they " ! 
Fallen in death ; smitten with the swift judgments of 
the Almighty for their murmurings or cut off in mid- 
dle life during their wanderings, to which they were 
doomed for their unbelief upon the report of the spies. 
The nation, as they stood before Moses, were truly his 
children. How had he borne them on his parental 
heart for forty years; given them line upon line of 
statute and of ritual; shaping their civil life and their 
religious life ; watching with the interest of a patriarch 
every development of their character ; devoted with the 

deepest love of his heart to their moral culture. 

Such was Moses and such were the people whom he 
addressed on the plains of Moab, with the words of sub- 
lime moral power, recorded in this book. 

It is not my purpose to repeat the points of this his- 
tory from Egypt and Sinai onward to that hour, which 
form the staple of Deut. 1-11. Let it suffice to say that 
Moses brings them forward here with more or less ex- 
pansion of the details for the sole purpose of enforcing 
their moral application. He makes those historic facts 
the text for this most impressive sermon — the basis of 
a series of exhortations to holy living which well up 
from the depths of his parental, loving heart, and testify 
how deeply he sympathized with God and with the true 
interests of his covenant people. Most solemnly does 
he exhort them against the great sin of their times — 



378 DEUTERONOMY 26. 

idolatry; and implore them to remember the God of 
their fathers ; the Giver of all their mercies ; the God 
of their national salvation. As a specimen of the his- 
toric sermon, nothing can be more admirable, complete, 
and effective. Coming from such a patriarch, from one 
who had done and suffered so much for his countrymen ; 
who had been admitted so freely into the deep counsels 
and sympathies of Israel's God ; who had been honored 
of God not only as the great law-giver, but also as the 
Savior and Deliverer of his nation — these words ought 
to have been listened to with profoundest attention. 
Let us hope they were truly wrought into the very souls 
of this generation. No one can read them attentively 
at this day without a quickened sense of the solemn 
relations which God establishes between himself and 
his covenant people in every age of time. 

Of the statutes, mostly civil, in small part religious, 
which chiefly fill chap. 12-26, there is little occasion 
for special remark here. They have chiefly come under 
consideration in my treatment of the civil code of Is- 
rael. Some points are much more fully expanded here 
than in the previous books, e. g. the year of release 
(chap. 15 : 1-11), the case of female captives (21 : 10-14). 
There is some new matter; e. g. the war-law (20) ; the 
expiation for murder by unknown hands (21 : 1-9); the 
case of partiality toward sons (21 : 15-17) and to men- 
tion no more, the form of announcement and consecra- 
tion with which the Hebrew worshiper was to bring 
before the Lord the first-fruits of his land, and also his 
tithes of the third year (chap. 26). These forms are 
instructive as giving us a just idea of the solemnities 
of Hebrew worship. Let us think of the Israelite 
coming up to Shiloh or to Jerusalem, say from the 
mountains of Ephraim or the pasture lands of Gilead, 
after the conquest and possession of Canaan, in obedi- 
ence to the law here recorded, thus : 

" That thou shalt take of the first of all the fruit of the earth, which 
thou shalt bring of thy land that the Lord thy God giveth thee, and 
shall put it in a basket, and shall go unto the place which the Lord 
thy God shall choose to place his name there. And thou shalt go 
unto the priest that shall be in those days, and say unto him, I pro- 
fess this day unto the Lord thy God, that I am come unto the coun- 
try which the Lord sware unto our fathers for to give us. And the 
priest shall take the basket out of thine hand, and set it down before 



DEUTERONOMY 26. 379 

the altar of the Lord thy God. And thou shalt speak and say before 
the Lord thy God, A Syrian* ready to perish was my father ; and he 
went down into Egypt, and sojourned there with a few, and became 
there a nation, great, mighty, and populous : and the Egyptians 
evil-entreated us, and afflicted us, and laid upon us hard bondage : 
and when we cried unto the Lord God of our fathers, the Lord 
heard our voice, and looked on our affliction, and our labor, and 
our oppression: and the Lord brought us forth out of Egypt with 
a mighty hand, and with an out-stretched arm, and with great ter- 
ribleness, and with signs, and with wonders : and he hath brought 
us into this place, and hath given us this land, even a land that flow- 
eth with milk and honey. And now, behold, I have brought the 
first-fruits of the land, which thou, O Lord, hast given me. And 
thou shalt set it before the Lord thy God, and worship before the " 
Lord thy God : and thou shalt rejoice in every good thing which 
the Lord thy God hath given unto thee, and unto thine house, thou, 
and the Levite, and the stranger that is among you" (vs. 2-11). 

This offering, put so impressively upon its great his- 
toric grounds — the preservations and mercies with 
which God had crowned their nation in fulfilling the 
promises made to the national fathers, became no un- 
meaning service. All is instinct with life. Those chil- 
dren of the old patriarchs reposing under their vine 
and fig-tree in the land flowing with milk and honey 
had a wonderful history, and God meant to have their 
ritual of worship link itself continually with that his- 
tory and take quickening impulses from those impres- 
sive associations. 

Not less pertinent and impressive is the form of 
announcement and protestation for the service of " tith- 
ing the tithes of their increase the third year" — on this 
wise : 

" When thou hast made an end of tithing all the tithes of thine 
increase the third year, which is the year of tithing, and hast given 
it unto the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, that 
they may eat within thy gates, and be filled ; then thou shalt say 
before the Lord thy God, I have brought away the hallowed things 
out of mine house, and also have given them unto the Levite, and 
unto the stranger, to the fatherless, and to the widow, according to 
all thy commandments which thou hast commanded me : I have 
not transgressed thy commandments, neither have I forgotten them : 
I have not eaten thereof in my mourning, neither have I taken 

* Jacob might properly be called a " Syrian " as having lived full 
twenty years with Laban the Syrian in the great Aram of the East. 
The point of his history where" he was "ready to perish" was that 
of the great famine in Canaan which drove him and his household 
into Egypt for bread. 



380 THE PROPHET LIKE MOSES. 

away aught thereof for any unclean use, nor given aught thereof for 
the dead : but I have hearkened to the voice of the Lord my God, 
and have done according to all that thou hast commanded me." 
(Deut. 26 : 12-15). 

-We must note with pleasure the fraternal and lib- 



eral spirit which this service cherished so effectively, 
remembering kindly the Levite, the stranger, the father- 
less, and the widow : the Levite as the religious servant 
of the nation ; the stranger as one but too often neg- 
lected and forsaken according to the impulses of man's 
. selfish nature, but one whom God remembered out of 
the depths of his fatherly care for the neglected and 
forlorn ; the fatherless and the widow as those whose 
cup of affliction is sore and should commend them to 
every humane sympathy of the heart. Such treatment 
of the stranger would naturally bring most of them into 
the Hebrew communion as proselytes. Where else in 
all the earth could they expect such kindness and such 
inducements to build their family home ? This in- 
side view of the institutions and usages of Hebrew 
thanksgiving worship remind us that God's religion 
has a social side ; forgets not man's social nature, but 
provides for fraternal sympathy and for the ministra- 
tions of kindness and relief to all the children of want 
and sorrow. 

This chapter (26) closes appropriately with the mu- 
tual relations between God and his people — they hav- 
ing solemnly declared ["avouched"] the Lord to be their 
God, and he on his part having in like manner declared 
them to be his people. 

" The Prophet like unto Moses" 

From this point we turn back to consider a special 
prophecy (Deut. 18 : 15-22), passed without notice in 
the rapid and general view taken of those chapters. 

Moses is contemplating the state of the people located 
in Canaan ; frequently brought into contact there with 
diviners, soothsayers, and magicians. The devoted na- 
tions of Canaan, he tells them, were rotten with those 
abominations; and for these sins the" Lord drove them 
out before Israel. Addressing the Israelites, he tells 
them they shall not have the least occasion to resort to 
magic arts for superhuman knowledge or help. 



THE PROPHET LIKE MOSES. 381 

u The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the 
midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me ; unto him ye shall 
hearken; according to all that thou desiredst of the Lord thy God 
in Horeb in the day of the assembly, saying, Let me not hear again 
the voice of the Lord my God, neither let me see this great fire any 
more, that I die not. And the Lord said unto me, They have well 
spoken that which they have spoken. I will raise them up a Prophet 
from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words 
in his mouth ; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall com- 
mand him. And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not 
hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will 
require it of him. But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a 
word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or 
that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall 
die" (Deut. 18: 15-20). 

Here the great question will be — Is Jesus the Messiah 
predicted here f 
The supposable theories are three : 

1. That the passage treats of the Hebrew prophets 
only, and not of the Messiah ; 

2. Of the Messiah only, and not of the Hebrew pro- 
phets ; 

3. Of the Messiah primarily, yet not excluding the 
Hebrew prophets. 

The reasons for including the Hebrew prophets lie in 
the connection of thought in which the passage stands ; 
its relation to the magicians of Canaan, and to false 
prophets. The Lord says to the people through Moses . 
I do not leave you dependent on magicians ; I give you 
prophets as 1 have given you Moses ; they shall teach 
you my words from time to time as ye may need words 
from your God. Moreover, there will be counterfeit 
prophets coming up ; but I will give you tests of their 

character, take heed to prove and reject them. This 

close connection of thought demands some reference to 
the succession of Hebrew prophets. 

On the other hand, the reasons for including the 
Messiah, and in fact for assuming a primary reference 
to him, lie in the use of the singular — " a prophet ; one 
great Prophet ;" and in his being compared to Moses — 
" like unto me." Moses stood in many respects quite 
above the grade of the future Hebrew prophets, having 
none like him in the obvious sense of this comparison 
except Jesus. This construction is greatly strength- 
ened by the authority of the New Testament writers 
and of Jesus himself, who manifestly found here the real 



382 THE PROPHET LIKE MOSES. 

Messiah. See his words (Jn. 5 : 46). " He [Moses] 
wrote of me." (Compare Luke 24 : 44.) Christ's allu- 
sion to his words as having authority (Jn. 12 : 48, 49) 
seem to refer to this passage (vs. 18, 19). " He that re- 
ceiveth not my words hath one that judgeth him ; the 
word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in 
the last day. For I have not spoken of myself, but the 
Father who hath sent me, he gave me a commandment 

what I should say," etc. The Lord said unto Moses — 

"I will put my words into his mouth, and he shall speak 
unto them all that I shall command him, and whosoever 
shall not hearken unto my words which he shall speak 

in my name, I will require it of him." The current 

opinion of the men taught by Christ finds in these 
words a prophecy of him. Philip (Jn. 1 : 45) said : 
" We have found him of whom Moses in the law did 
write — Jesus of Nazareth." Peter (Acts 3 : 22, 23) cites 
this very passage as having been spoken truly by Moses 
and as being fulfilled in Christ. So also does Stephen 
(Acts 7: 37). The Samaritans also (as appears from 
Jn. 4 : 25) found the Messiah here, since they received 
of the Old Testament scriptures the Pentateuch only. 
The -circumstance that the Christ whom they expected 
would " teach them all things " points certainly to this 
prophecy rather than to prophecies from Genesis 

(e.g. 3 : 15 or 49 : 10). Finally, the voice from the 

cloud at Christ's transfiguration — "Hear ye him" 
(Mat. 17 : 5) corresponds to the prominent point 
of this prophecy — " Unto him shall ye hearken " 
(v. 15). Moses (present at the transfiguration) must 

have recognized this identity. These considerations 

compel us to find here a primary reference to the 
Messiah. 

The full answer to the question: How can these 
words cover both the one great Prophet — the Messiah ; 
and also the succession of Hebrew prophets ? — will be 
found in these facts : That the spirit of Jesus was in all 
the old prophets ; that they were his servants, bearing 
his messages ; that he and they were parts of the same 
great system of divine revelation to men; and that 
Christ's mission was at once the guaranty and pledge 
of theirs — their work being linked in with his as the 
natural consequent and adjunct. Comprehensively 
spoken of, the one great prophet included all the lesser 



THE BLESSINGS AND THE CURSES. 383 

prophets; the promise of the one embracing and imply- 
ing the promise of all. 

Chapter 27 provides for a special service to be per- 
formed after they are located in Canaan. The record 
of its fulfillment appears in Josh. 8 : 30-35. The serv- 
ice was two-fold : first the writing of the law on large 
plastered stones : second, the proclamation of a series 
of blessings and also of curses in the presence of the 
whole people. 

As to the first, it does not appear definitely how 
much was to be written upon these stones. Somewhat 
more probably than the ten commandments as written 
originally on two stone tablets ; yet probably not all the 
statutes and judgments which appear in the last four 
books of Moses. Perhaps the writing included the 
curses and blessings proclaimed from Mounts Ebal and 

Gerizim. The stones were great ; the number is not 

given. The writing was done w T hile the plaster was 
yet fresh and soft. When hardened it would stand for 
a considerable time. The purpose was rather present 
effect than permanent record — a solemn testimony that 
the people who had now taken possession of Canaan 
were in covenant with their God to obey this law. 

Moses records in full the manner of the rehearsal of 
blessings and of curses : the blessings from Mt. Gerizim; 
the curses from Mt. Ebal : six tribes standing on the 
former and six on the latter : the Levites solemnly and 
in concert pronouncing the words, and the people in 
concert responding, Amen. Here may be seen the 
words of these blessings and curses (Deut. 27 : 14-26, 
and 28: 1-6). The " curses " specify the sins, but the 
announcement of blessings, assuming in general obedi- 
ence to God, simply enumerates the various good which 

the Lord will bestow. The curses do not enumerate 

all the sins which might be committed nor all upon 
which curses would fall, but only some heinous crimes 
as specimens. This service, performed with due so- 
lemnity, must have been impressive. The gathered 
thousands of Israel overspreading the contiguous mount- 
ains; the priests and Levites rehearsing with loud 
voice these fearful curses, and the people responding to 
each curse their expressive Amen ^ how must every 
thoughtful heart have been thrilled, and every sensi- 



384 LAST WORDS OF MOSES. 

tive conscience recoiled from the sins thus terribly de- 
nounced ! 

Moses proceeds to expatiate through chapter 28 upon 
the blessings which should reward obedience, but es- 
pecially upon the curses that must come upon disobe- 
dience. It would seem that this catalogue of curses 
has well-nigh exhausted the possibilities of calamity — 
personal, social, national — that can befall the children 
of men. Alas ! this catalogue was fearfully prophetic 
of that avalanche of w T oes which came upon this same 
people in the destruction of their city and country, 
first by the Chaldeans ; last and most fearfully, by the 
Romans. How were the vials of wrath through those 
agencies of God poured out upon the guilty people for 
their great iniquities! 

In the two next chapters (29 and 30) Moses seems to 
gather up all the moral forces of the nation's history 
into one fervent appeal to induce obedience and to 
press the people to most earnest consecration to the 
Lord their God. The great mercies of God upon them 
and their fathers on the one hand coupled with largest 
promises of good hereafter ; on the other hand, the fear- 
ful curses impending over disobedience, are spread out 
to their view : life on the one hand, death on the other, 
awaiting their choice, pending upon their decision, 
sure to come according to their free election of the one 
course or the other : — How are these moral forces made 
to culminate and press upon the conscience of the 
whole people ! 

It is a solemn act for even one so holy as Moses to 
gather a nation of children about him to say to them 
his last words and prepare to die (chapter 31). There 
are some last words to be said; some last things to be 
done. Fully conscious that his days are numbered 
and that his end is near he must make the public 
transfer of his responsibilities to Joshua. The written 
law upon which he has spent so much thought and la- 
bor must be properly committed to the priests the sons 
of Levi (31: 9-13), and provision made not only for its 
preservation, but for its public rehearsal in each Sab- 
batic year at the feast of tabernacles. Not the least 

important of these last things was the putting of fare- 
well thoughts into the form of song which might be 






deut. 32. 385 

committed to memory, impressed with all the power of 
music (perhaps), and embalmed in the hearts of the 
people with the fragrance and impressiveness of its 
poetic power. There are properly two songs, one of a 
general character (chapter 32); the other specific, in 
the form of blessing or benediction upon the several 
tribes (chapter 33). The latter follows the patriarchal 
usage which we have seen in the case of Jacob (Gen. 

49). As to the first which is distinctively styled 

"this song," Moses received from the Lord special di- 
rections to write it out and " teach it to the children of 
Israel ". (31 : 19) ; to " put it in their mouths that it 
might be a witness for God against the children of Is- 
rael," and " not be forgotten out of the mouths of their 
seed" (v. 21). In this chapter (31: 16-30) the Lord 
not only directed Moses to write out this song but gave 
him its subject-matter almost entire — the whole cur- 
rent of its thought — the facts in the future history 
of the people upon which it is built : — in substance, 
thus : 

The Lord said to Moses— Thou shalt sleep with thy 
fathers ; other generations of this people will arise who 
will depart from me in grievous apostasy — going after 
the strange gods of the nations; they will break my 
covenant w T ith them. My anger will kindle against 
them in that day; I will forsake them and hide my 
face from them and bring upon them sore judgments — 
until they say : "Are not these evils upon us because 

our God is not among us " ? Yet more definitely the 

Lord gave Moses some of the inducing causes of this 
apostasy; viz. fullness of bread ; the absence of want and 
trial ; coming into a land flowing with milk and honey. 
Filling themselves and waxing fat, they will become 
sensual, pleasure-loving, and lost to the fear of God. 
So they will turn to other gods (v. 20). Hence the oc- 
casion for this witnessing song, of solemn forewarning, 
pregnant with moral forces against apostasy and rich 
in suggestions of untold value for those apostate gen- 
erations to whom it would specially apply. 

I place this song before the reader with explanations 
of its dark points and some suggestions as to its line of 
thought and its moral application. 



386 LAST WORDS OF MOSES. 

1. Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak ; and hear, O earth, 
the words of my mouth. 

2. My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as 
the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers 
upon the grass : 

3. Because I will publish the name of the Lord ; ascribe ye great- 
ness unto our God. 

4. He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judg- 
ment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he. 

This call upon the heavens and the earth to hear the 
words of this song must be construed not as a call upon 
the intelligent beings of heaven to listen to it ; much 
less, upon the material sun, moon, and stars, and this 
globe of ours; but rather as poetic usage, due to the 
lofty inspiration of the poet's soul who feels that the 
message which burns in his heart is so momentous to 
his people that all nature — above and beneath — may 
fitly be summoned to hear. It is his strongest way of" 
saying — Let all people of this and future generations 
give ear and heart to these messages from the God of 

heaven and earth. The poet-prophets of Israel in 

later days adopt the same form of address (Isa. 1 : 2, and 

Jer. 2: 12, and 6: 19). "My doctrine "—the truths I 

teach — "shall drop as the rain"; good for the soul as 
rain for the grass ; refreshing, fraught with real life and 
the beauty of holiness : — the reason of its great value 
being, "Because I am to proclaim the name of the 

Lord" — i. e. his name as significant of his nature. 

Appreciating this sacred name, ye will testify to his 
greatness ; your heart will be impressed with a sense of 
his excellent glory. 

" Their Rock is he " — the writer placing this forcible 
word first in order. The great elements of his char- 
acter are stable, solid, enduring, changeless: every 
thing in his nature and work is perfect ; all his ways 
are righteous ; a God of truth is he, whose words of 
promise or of threatening can never fail. "Without 
iniquity " moreover ; there is nothing in him morally 
tortuous; all is on the right line of equity and jus- 
tice. Such is the Great God of our fathers — the God of 
our national covenant. It was pertinent to place these 
views of God at the head of this song because they set 
the guilt of forsaking God in its true light, and would 
also vindicate his justice in sending even great calam- 



deut. 32. 387 

ities upon his apostate people. — —In later ages David 
uses this figure— (the " Rock ") — of God with exquisite 
beauty and force (Ps. 18 : 2, and 28 : 1, and 42 : 9). 

5. They have corrupted themselves, their spot is not the spot of 
his children ; they are a perverse and crooked generation. 

The poet turns suddenly to the great fact of the fu- 
ture apostasy of God's people. — " Their spot " — moral de- 
filement—the dark pollution of their souls. That does 
not indicate my children. My dutiful sons and daugh- 
ters never carry such stains ; never give their hearts to 
other gods ; never turn their backs upon their loving 
and glorious Father I 

6. Do ye thus requite the Lord, O foolish people and unwise ? is 
not he thy Father that has bought thee? hath he not made thee and 
established thee? 

7. Eemember the days of old, consider the years of many genera- 
tions : ask thy father, and he will shew thee ; thy elders, and they 
will tell thee. 

Is it possible that ye can thus requite your own Je- 
hovah? Is this fair treatment of such a Father? Is 
not the God whom ye have forsaken the very same who 
hath bought thee from bondage; redeemed thee for 
himself; made thee a prosperous and happy nation, 
and established thee in permanent strength ? Go back 
over the grand ages of your national history; ask the 
fathers for their testimony to the great works of your 
God in your behalf. 

8. When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, 
when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people 
according to the number of the children of Israel. 

9. For the Lord's portion is his people ; Jacob is the lot of his in- 
heritance. 

In the original planting of the nations the Lord re- 
served Canaan — best and fairest of all lands — for his 
people. This refers to those providential agencies by 
which God assigned to the nations descended from No- 
ah's sons their geographical localities and national 
home. In this arrangement he reserved sufficient ter- 
ritory for Israel — " according to their numbers " ; and 
in the best locality for their residence. The Lord ac- 



388 LAST WORDS OF MOSES. 

counted them his own people and gave them his own 
reserved "lot." 

10. He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wil- 
derness ; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the 
apple of his eye. 

11. As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, 
spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her 
wings : 

12. So the Lord alone did lead him, and there was no strange god 
with him. 

" He found him in a desert land." With poetic license 
the writer touches Hebrew history where he will — in 
this case at Sinai where God met Israel visibly, and 
called them into special covenant with himself. All 
through that wilderness he led Israel about by his 
guiding pillar of cloud and of fire ; instructed him by pre- 
cepts and statutes; kept him from danger even as a 
man guards the apple of his eye (which the more poetic 
Hebrew called the little man of the eye — that diminutive 
picture of yourself). The next figure — at once ex- 
quisite in beauty and forcible for illustration — comes 
from the eagle training his young to fly. When he 
sees that the time has come for this training, he stirs 
up his nestlings — waking them as the father does his 
sons at the morning hour ; flutters over them as if to 
show them the exercise ; spreads abroad his wings ; 
takes them up aloft, casts them off upon their flying 
power— coming swift to the rescue if their strength 
should fail ; — all to train them into courage, and strength 
of wing, and steadiness of stroke. So the Lord alone — 
he and none other — did lead Israel. There w r as no 
strange god there. In all his wilderness training of 
forty most eventful years — that tender youth-time of 
Israel, there was not the least help from Baal or Ash- 
toreth. But the hand of his own God was every- where ; 
in his daily bread; in his rock-gushing waters; in his 
pillar of cloud and of fire ; in his victories over Amalek, 
Arad, and Midian. This high hand and uplifted arm, 
strong as the eagle's pinions, bore the younglings taken 
from his nest over and through the roughnesses of that 
waste howling wilderness, until at length he set them 
down in the promised Canaan. 

13. He made him ride on the high places of the earth, that he 



deut. 32. 389 

might eat the increase of the fields ; and he made him to suck honey- 
out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock ; 

14. Butter of kine, and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs, and rams 
of the breed of Bashan, and goats, with the fat of kidneys of wheat ; 
and thou didst drink the pure blood of the grape* 

The fatness of this fertile land calls out the richest 

poetic imagery. "He made him ride on the high 

places of the earth " — letting him down just a little yet 
but a little from the symbol of the eagle's lofty flight. 
" Riding on the high places of the land " — as if his were 
a railway path, stretched from summit to summit, rest- 
ing only on mountain peaks, commanding every mag- 
nificent prospect; or with an eye to his conquest of 
Canaan, the poet sees him sweeping through w r ith 
the tread of a conquerer, for the phrase seems to con- 
ceive of the hill-tops as the strategic points in war, com- 
manding the whole country. As we might expect, Isa- 
iah admired and adopted this gem of poetry (Isa. 58 : 14). 

The richest luxuries of oriental climes lie at the na- 
tion's feet ; honey and oil ; butter and milk ; rams and 
goats; "with the fat of the kidneys of wheat" which 
curiously draws its terms for the best of wheat from the 

favorite qualities of animal food. In v. 14 the Heb. 

word for " pure " [" pure blood of the grape "], means by 
its etymology — effervescing, bubbling up, in the process 
of fermentation. Our translators probably supposed it 
to have worked itself " pure " by this process. The 
word seems to describe the process — not the subsequent 
state. 

15. But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked : thou art waxen fat, thou 
art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness ; then he forsook God 
which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation. 

16. They provoked him to jealousy with strange gods } with abom- 
inations provoked they him to anger. 

17. They sacrificed unto devils, not to God ; to gods whom they 
knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared 
not. 

18. Of the Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast for- 
gotten God that formed thee. 

Here is the sad moral result of being over-fed, over- 
tempted. "Jeshurun," the upright one ; he who had 

bound himself by covenant to walk uprightly with God. 

The Hebrews constantly associate fatness with 

moral obtuseness, insensibility, and consequent ob- 



390 LAST WORDS OF MOSES. 

liquity. The ceremonial distinctions of things clean 
and unclean assumed this — swine being utterly un- 
clean, and the fatty portions of sacrificed animals being 
accounted good only for burning on the altar. Hence 
the figure — Jeshurun, too fat for self-control and self-de- 
nial ; too fat for the worship of the pure and holy One ; 
and consequently he forsook the God who made and 

blessed him. The verb for " lightly esteemed " means 

to regard as dried up ; withered ; of faded beauty. So 
Israel thought of their God though he had been to them 
the Rock of their salvation. The sad fact of their fall 
into idol-worship is reiterated and made impressively 
emphatic. They provoked God to jealousy; for how 
could he be otherwise than jealous when they cast him 
off and gave their hearts' homage to devils ; to new gods, 
unknown to their fathers ; gods that were no gods at 
all ! The Hebrew word here for " devils " means pri- 
marily lords— mighty ones. The Septuagint and Vul- 
gate give it demons — true to the ultimate idea, for all 
idol-worship is equivalent to the worship of the devil, 

being real obedience to his will. The blackness of this 

guilt lies in its forgetting, disowning God, our Great 
Benefactor ; our only real Friend. 

19. And when the Lord saw it, he abhorred them, because of the 
provoking of his sons, and of his daughters. 

20. And he said, I will hide my face from them, I will see what 
their end shall be : for they are a very fro ward generation, children 
in whom is no faith. 

21. They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God ; 
they have provoked me to anger with their vanities : and I will 
move them to jealousy with those which are not a people ; I will pro- 
voke them to anger with a foolish nation. 

The most cruel point as to God was that this insult 
came from his own "sons and daughters" From them 

he might expect better treatment. What shall he do ? 

What can he do, less than to hide his face from them 
and to leave them to try the friendship of the new gods 
they had so madly chosen ? "I will see what their end 

shall be." They will see in due time ! In v. 21 there 

is a play upon the words — the same verbs, " move to 
jealousy " and " provoke," being used first of their ways 
toward God ; next, of God's ways in retribution toward 
them. Paul (Rom. 10: 14) assumes that this passage 
at least applies well if indeed it does not refer primarily 






deut. 32. 391 

to God's judgments on Israel by casting her off, and 
taking into her place of privilege the Gentiles whom 
Israel had been wont to regard as nobody. 

22. For a fire is kindled in my anger, and shall burn unto the low- 
est hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on 
fire the foundations of the mountains. 

23. I will heap mischiefs upon them ; I will spend mine arrows 
upon them. 

24. They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning 
heat, and with bitter destruction : I will also send the teeth of beasts 
upon them, with the poison of serpents of the dust. 

25. The sword without, and terror within, shall destroy both the 
young man and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of gray 
hairs. 

These are the vials of retributive judgment poured 
out on Israel, first for her persistent idolatries; last 
for her murder of her King Messiah. The fire is 
thought of as burning deep; not merely skimming the 
surface but penetrating to the deep foundations of her 
mountains. " Hell " here is not to be taken in its mod- 
ern usage — the place of future punishment — but in the 
early Hebrew sense as lying below the earth's surface — 
the " pit " into which Korah and his company went 

down. "Burnt with hunger n (v. 24) is more literally 

exhausted, their vitality sucked out of them by famine — 

a fearful doom ! The sword abroad and terror at home 

(literally, " in the chambers")? shall bereave [Heb.] both 
the young man and the virgin — a calamity well com- 
pared to bereavement of most loved offspring. 

26. I said, I would scatter them into corners, I would make the 
remembrance of them to cease from among men : 

27. Were it not that I feared the wrath of the enemy, lest their 
adversaries should behave themselves strangely, and lest they should 
say, Our hand is high, and the Lord hath not done all this. 

28. For they are sl nation void of counsel, neither is there any un- 
derstanding in them. 

The thought is that for these great sins the Lord 
would have utterly annihilated Israel were it not for 
the honor of his name before the nations as their rec- 
ognized God. The word for "scatter into corners" 

means rather, to Moid aivay as with his powerful breath. 

It is not precisely the "wrath" of the enemy, but 

rather the reproaches, or the underlying spirit which 
would manifest itself in insult and haughty exultation. 



392 LAST WORDS OF MOSES. 

The context shows the true idea. Lest they should say 
" Israel is down because our hand is high and our power 
resistless. We have done it. Their God is far enough 
from being Almighty." "Behave themselves strange- 
ly " should rather be — should reason strangely ; should 
make this strange inference, that the fall of Israel was 
due to their own great power, rather than to God's for- 
saking them for their great sin. 

29. O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they 
would consider their latter end ! 

30. How should one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand 
to flight, except their Rock had sold them, and the Lord had shut 
them up ? 

31. For their rock is not as our Eock, even our enemies themselves 
being judges. 

How does the tenderness of a loving Father's heart 
pour itself out in these matchless words ! if my peo- 
ple were only wise ; wise to know and appreciate their 
Great Benefactor ! Wise to render him the homage, the 
trust, and the love of their heart ! How would one of 
them chase a thousand of their foes if only their God 
were on their side ; if he who is their Eock and Strength 

had not sold and disowned them ! Expressively Moses 

adds — For as they very well know — we have it on their 
own admission — their Rock is not as our Rock; their 
gods were never like our God. Moses did not say this 
without authority. He remembered how the Egyptian 
hosts in the Red Sea cried out, " Let us flee from the 
face of Israel, for the Lord fighteth for them against the 
Egyptians " (Ex. 14 : 25). The testimony of Balaam was 
still fresh : " God hath blessed ; I can not reverse it. 
The Lord his God is with him, and the shout of a king 
is among them. God brought them out of Egypt ; he 
hath as it were the strength of a unicorn. Surely there 
is no enchantment against Jacob, nor any divination 
against Israel. Behold, the people shall rise up as a 
great lion," etc. (Num. 23 : 20-24). The fame of God's 
wonders for Israel was already abroad among all the 
adjacent nations, as maybe seen in the words of Rahab 
(Josh. 2 : 9-11). 

32. For their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and the fields of Go- 
morrah : their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter : 

33. Their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of 



deut. 32, 393 

34. Is not this laid up in store with me, and sealed up among my 
treasures ? 

35. To me belon-geth vengeance, and recompense ; their foot shall 
slide in due time : for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the 
things that shall come upon them make haste, 

By a somewhat sudden transition of thought, " for " 
[first word of v. 32] answers the implied question — 
Why then, if Israel's Rock is so mighty, does not Israel 
live and triumph in perpetual victory and prosperity ? 
Do ye ask, Why not? Because they are corrupt like 
Sodom ; their " vine ;? being put poetically for them- 
selves morally considered. Their heart and life are al- 
together rotten. In v. 34 I take the sense to be — Do 

I not remember all their sin ? Is it not laid up before 
me, awaiting its time for a fearful retribution, sealed 
up as securely as one keeps his choice treasures? 
"Vengeance belongeth to me" — is my sole prerogative, 
and can not fail of its due execution. 

36. For the Lord shall judge his people, and repent himself for 
his servants, when he seeth that their power is gone, and there is none 
shut up, or left. 

37. And he shall say, Where are their gods, their rock in whom 
they trusted, 

38. Which did eat the fat of their sacrifices, and drank the wine 
of their drink offerings ? let them rise up and help you, and be your 
protection. 

God will arise for judgment and retribution. Calam- 
ities must scourge the guilty; mercy will spare the 
innocent and ultimately save his Zion. In the latter 
portion of this song (vs. 36-42), the divine agency seems 
to be of a twofold character ; exterminating the hope- 
lessly guilty, but sparing and restoring the penitent, 
and ultimately retrieving the fortunes of his kingdom. 

"When God seeth that his people are powerless and 

none remain, either bond or free, shut up or let go [the 
sense of the Heb. words translated " shut up or left "] 3 
he will ask, What has become of the gods to whom my 
people have apostatized, with whom they ate their sac- 
rifices in common ? Since those gods have utterly failed 
them, let me call their attention to myself. Perhaps 
now it will not be in vain. 

39. See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me: I 
kill, and I make alive ; I wound, and I heal : neither is there any that 
can deliver out of my hand. 






394 M0SE8 BLESSES THE TRIBES. 

40. For I lift up my hand to heaven, and say, I live forever. 

41. If I whet my glittering sword, and mine hand take hold on 
judgment ; I will render vengeance to mine enemies, and will re- 
ward them that hate me. 

42. I will make mine arrows drunk with blood, and my sword 
shall devour flesh ; and that with the blood of the slain and of the 
captives from the beginning of revenges upon the enemy. 

They shall know the power of their God. When I 
lift up my awful hand to bring down retribution on the 
guilty apostates among my people, shall not my arrows 
be drunk with blood and my sword devour flesh ? The 
guilty must fall; yet through the fires of these sore judg- 
ments Zion shall be purified and so redeemed. The 

last clause of v. 42 were better read — " From the head 
of the princes of the enemy." 

43. Eejoice, O ye nations, with his people : for he will avenge the 
blood of his servants, and will render vengeance to his adversaries, 
and will be merciful unto his land, and to his people. 

This closing strain brings out in unmistakable terms 
the idea which seems to have been implied since v. 36, 
viz. that these great judgments on Israel will not ulti- 
mately break down God's cause and kingdom, but will 
only cut off the hopelessly reprobate and really bring 
deliverance, purity, salvation, to Zion. Therefore let 
all the nations rejoice with his people. They have a 
deeper interest than they are yet aware of in this puri- 
fying process for the ultimate redemption of Zion. The 
prophetic eye of Moses sees through to the glorious in- 
gathering of the Gentiles to Christ, and seems to trace 
the connection of this ingathering with the judgments 

sent on apostate Israel in the first Christian age. 

The outcome of this song is therefore ultimately hope- 
ful to the real Zion. It gives a fearfully dark view of 
the guilty apostasies of Israel — those which culminated 
first in the captivity to Babylon; last in the fall of their 
city before the Romans. In the result God vindicates his 
great name ; purifies his people, and spreads the glory 
of his name far abroad among the nations. 

Deut. 33. 

The blessing of Moses upon the tribes shortly before his death. 

This blessing of Moses follows in general the usage 
of patriarchal times, as seen in Noah, but especially in 



deut. 33. 395 

Jacob, the great tribe-father (Gen. 49). It also follows 
the impulses of the great heart of Moses, now a patriarch 
of one hundred and twenty years, who had long outlived 
the associates of his earlier days ; who had suffered and 
borne every thing for his people and had labored for 
them more than a father for his sons and daughters. In 
this parting hour he has some last blessings to bequeathe 
before his eyes shall close in death. Let us listen to his 
dying benedictions. 

The first five verses apply generally to all the tribes. 
The last four also are general rather than special ; while 
the intervening portion of the chapter (vs. 6-25) is made 

up of special benedictions upon the several tribes. 

Note also that while the " Song" [chap. 32] is largely in 
the minor strain — a sad prophetic vision of the nation's 
future apostasies and consequent calamities, this chap- 
ter is pure benediction — the outpouring of hopeful prayers 
and heartfelt good w T ishes, with no shade of anticipated 
disaster, no foreseen calamities. 

1. And this is the blessing, wherewith Moses the man of God 
blessed the children of Israel before his death. 

2. And he said, The Lord came from Sinai, and rose up from 
Seir unto them ; he shined forth from Mount Paran, and he came 
with ten thousands of saints : from his right hand went a fiery law 
for them. 

3 Yea, he loved the people ; and all his saints are in thy hand : 
and they sat down at thy feet ; every one shall receive of thy words. 

4. Moses commanded us a law, even the inheritance of the con- 
gregation of Jacob. 

5. And he was king in Jeshurun, when the heads of the people 
and the tribes of Israel were gathered together. 

The first thing to be noticed was that greatest fact, 
equally of the life of Moses and of the life of all Israel, 
viz. the coming forth of the glorious God in majesty so 
sublime from the mountains of Sinai. How did the 
blaze of his glory illumine her towering summits and 
flash forth from all her hill-tops! Such a coming — 

w T hen had the w r orld ever seen before? "Rose up 

from Seir " would suggest to a Hebrew the rising of the 

sun in his glory. "He came with ten thousands of 

saints," says our English version ; but the Hebrew has 
it from — the same preposition which is used before Si- 
nai, Seir, and Paran — certainly implying therefore that 
God came forth from the midst of those ten thousand 
holy ones in a sense analogous to that in which he 



396 MOSES BLESSES THE TRIBES. 

shone forth from Sinai, Seir, and Paran. He must re- 
fer to holy angels to whom in great numbers Jacob was 
introduced at Bethel and Mahanaim. But whether the 
Lord came forth from them, leaving them in heaven, or 
shone forth from among them, attending him on Sinai, 
can not be certainly determined from the w r ords used 
here. Other scriptures however speak of the law as 
given by the ministration of angels, and therefore fully 
imply their presence on Sinai at the giving of the law. 
See Ps. 68: 17, and Acts 7: 53, and Gal. 3 : 19, and Heb. 

2: 2. The last clause of v. 1 — "from his right hand 

went forth a fiery law for them " — involves grave diffi- 
culties of a sort which can not well be put before the 
English reader. The word translated "law" is un- 
known to the ancient Hebrew — is not the word used 
for law in v. 4 and in the Pentateuch generally. The 
best critical authorities would unite these two words 
which our translators supposed to mean "fire" and 
"law," into one word of quite different signification, 
referring perhaps to the pillar of fire [Gesenius] ; or to 
some geographical point [Fuerst] ; or to flashes of light- 
ning [Keil]. V. 3 is singularly abrupt, and conse- 
quently the course of thought is obscure. God was lov- 
ing the people [continuous action] — i. e. all the nations 
and not the Hebrews only — showing that God shone 
forth from Sinai in love to the race. All his holy ones 
are his wards, upheld by his arm. They lie humbly at 
his feet; in filial loving obedience they receive his 
words — indicating most beautifully the spirit with 
which all true souls welcome God's uttered words as to 
moral duty. It is perhaps possible that [as Keil sug- 
gests] the "holy ones" here are holy angels; yet I in- 
cline to apply the phrase without restriction to all holy 

beings, man certainly not excluded. Moses gave us 

a law, as a legacy, inheritance, for the whole congrega- 
tion of Jacob. He [God] was King in Jeshurun [over 
the upright people'], even over all that great nation with 
its congregated tribes and their tribal leaders. 

6. Let Reuben live, and not die ; and let not his men be few. 

As to Reuben, let his tribe be perpetuated and not 
become extinct ; for some fear on this point might have 
sprung from the scenes of Num. 16; the fearful death 



deut. 33. 397 

of Dathan, Abiram, and On, all sons of Reuben (Num. 
16: 1,27). 

7. And this is the blessing of Judah : and he said, Hear, Lord, the 
voice of Judah, and bring him unto his people : let his hands be 
sufficient for him ; and be thou a help to him from his enemies. 

Judah is thought of as leading the tribes in battle, 
going forth in advance of all others to war. Hence the 
prayer — Bring him back safely to his people from the 
scenes of battle. Let his hand [military power] be 
equal to any emergency. 

8. And of Levi he said, Let thy Thummim and thy Urim be with 
thy holy one, whom thou didst prove at Massah, and with whom 
thou didst strive at the waters of Meribah ; 

9. Who said unto his father and to his mother, I have not seen 
him; neither did he acknowledge his brethren, nor knew his own 
children : for they have observed thy word, and kept thy covenant. 

10. They shall teach Jacob thy judgments, and Israel thy law; 
they shall put incense before thee, and whole burnt sacrifice upon 
thine altar. 

11. Bless, Lord, his substance, and accept the work of his hands : 
smite through the loins of them that rise against him, and of them 
that hate him, that they rise not again. 

The blessing on Levi suggested the insignia on 
Aaron's breast-plate, known as the "Urim and Thum- 
mim " [described somewhat in Ex. 28 : 29, 30] — the 
words signifying Light and Right. These breast-plate 
insignia were used in some way, not altogether clear at 
this day, in obtaining special directions from the Lord. 

The tribe of Levi as a whole became in a sense 

God's "Holy One," bearing in the person of Aaron 
these insignia. God had proved them at Massah and 
Meribah where the people murmured against Moses 
and Aaron. It was especially in the scenes of the calf- 
worship (Ex. 32) and of the Midianites (Num. 25) that 
the tribe of Levi, and particularly Phineas, proved 
themselves true to God, with higher regard for him 
and his honor than for father, mother, brethren, or chil- 
dren; for they remembered and honored God's word 
and covenant. Let them therefore have the functions 
of the priesthood, to teach Jacob thy law and to minis- 
ter at the national altar. 



398 MOSES BLESSES THE TRIBES. 

12. And of Benjamin he said, The beloved of the Lord shall dwell 
in safety by him ; and the Lord shall cover him all the day long, and 
he shall dwell between his shoulders. 

Let Benjamin, the beloved of the Lord, dwell safely 
by the side of the Lord, his protector, abiding between 
his shoulders — i. e, upon his back where fathers are 
wont to place their children to bear them long dis- 
tances. This tribe is thought of as God's child, to be 
borne upon his shoulder. 

13. And of Joseph he said, Blessed of the Lord be his land, for the 
precious things of heaven, for the dew, and for the deep that crouch- 
eth beneath, 

14. And for the precious fruits brought forth by the sun, and for the 
precious things put forth by the moon, 

15. And for the chief things of the ancient mountains, and for the 
precious things of the lasting hills, 

16. And for the precious things of the earth and fulness thereof, 
and for the good will of him that dwelt in the bush : let the blessing 
come upon the head of Joseph, and upon the top of the head of him 
that was separated from his brethren. 

17. His glory is like the firstling of his bullock, and his horns are 
like the horns of unicorns : with them he shall push the people 
together to the ends of the earth : and they are the ten thousands of 
Ephraim, and they are the thousands of Manasseh. 

The blessings on Joseph comprise all good upon his 
land; the dew and the shower, the sunshine and the 
moonbeams ; all the products of the mountains and of 
the deep ; — let all come upon the head of him who was 
prince among his brethren [in Egypt] — this being the 
sense, rather than " separated " from his brethren. 

18. And of Zebulun he said, Eejoice, Zebulun, in thy going out ; 
and, Issachar, in thy tents. 

19. They shall call the people unto the mountain ; there they 
shall offer sacrifices of righteousness: for they shall suck of the 
abundance of the seas, and of treasures hid in the sand. 

Let Zebulun and Issachar rejoice both in their going 
forth and in their tents ; equally in their labor and in 
their repose. Living on the shore of the great sea, let 
their influence go forth upon and beyond the great wa- 
ters, calling the nations to the mountain of the Lord's 
house for worship with sacrifices of righteousness to the 
God of the whole earth; and let Zion under their hand 
become enriched with the abundance of the seas — of all 






deut. 33. 399 

countries beyond the seas — bringing their gold and 
their treasures to the God of Israel. Isaiah has the 
same thought often ; e. g. chapters 49, 60, and 66. 

20. And of Gad lie said, Blessed be lie that enlargeth Gad: 
he dwelleth as a lion, and teareth the arm with the crown of the 
head. 

21. And he provided the first part for himself, because there, in 
a portion of the lawgiver, was he seated ; and he came with the 
heads of the people, he executed the justice of the Lord, and his 
judgments with Israel. 

The allusion to Gad seems to be built upon his then 
recent history — leading the movement for locating the 
two and a half tribes on the East of Jordan and fore- 
most in battle and in victor y over the national enemy; 
prompt also to go over Jordan to execute God's righteous 
judgments on the devoted nations of Canaan. 

22. And of Dan he said, Dan is a lion's whelp: he shall leap from 
Bashan. 

Dan is fierce and formidable in war, to which his 
border locality on the extreme North may have con- 
duced. Jacob touches the same tribal characteristic 
(Gen. 49 : 16, 17). 

23. And of Naphtali he said, O Naphtali, satisfied with favor, and 
full with the blessing of the Lord, possess thou the west and the 
south. 

24. And of Asher he said, Let Asher be blessed with children ; let 
him be acceptable to his brethren, and let him dip his foot in oil. 

25. Thy shoes shall be iron and brass ; and as thy days, so shall thy 
strength be. 

Let Asher be blessed above the sons — may be the 
sense — the favored one among his brethren. May thy 
castle-bars [not " shoes "] be of iron and brass. But the 
best authorities on the word "strength" prefer rest 
[Gesenius], or affluence [Fuerst]. The prayer is that 
this rest or affluence may be life-long. 

26. There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun, who rideth upon 
the heaven in thy help, and in his excellency on the sky. 

27. The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the ever- 
lasting arms : and he shall thrust out the enemy from before thee ; 
and shall say, Destroy them, 

28. Israel then shall dwell in safety alone ; the fountain of Jacob 

18 



400 MOSES BLESSES THE TRIBES. 

shall be upon a land of corn and wine ; also his heavens shall drop 
down dew. 

29. Happy art thou, O Israel: who is like unto thee, people 
saved by the Lord, the shield of thy help, and who is the sword of 
thy excellency ! and thine enemies shall be found liars unto thee ; 
and thou shalt tread upon their higfe places. 

These words of unsurpassed sublimity and most ex- 
quisite poetry set forth the glories of the God of Israel 
and the blessedness of the people who enjoy such a 
Father and live under such a Protector. Perhaps we 
can not give them higher praise than to say they are 
worthy of the pen of Moses — worthy even to be his last 
words — the noblest utterances of one who above any 
other mere man had communed with God face to face as 

man does with his dearest friend. The English 

translation is almost faultless, constituting one of the 
grandest passages to be found in English literature. 
In the last clause of v. 27, 1 prefer to follow the Hebrew 
more closely and say simply Destroy I The high behest 
of Jehovah, hurling the enemy forth from the land of 
his people is best expressed in the emphatic word, 
Destroy! In the last verse, the clause, u Thine ene- 
mies shall be found liars unto thee," means that they 
shall cringe, fawn, and flatter with false and lying pre- 
tenses to gain if but a little favor from a people so ter- 
rible in arms as Israel with God on her side. The case 
of the Gibeonites is mostly in point. 

It was due to the stand-point of Moses, looking forth 
across the Jordan upon the earthly Canaan, beholding 
the earthly Israel just then entering there; Jehovah 
the shield of their help, the sword of their excellency, 
the scourge of their foes — this mighty God riding 
sublimely upon the heavens for their help, his ever- 
lasting arms underneath them forevermore — that this 
view should be primarily of scenes in the present life 
and not in the future ; of earthly and material relations 
rather than of spiritual. Yet let us not forget that the 
manifestations of God in blessings of earthly sort fore- 
shadow like manifestations in the spiritual life. The 
God who saves his people here in things of earth, in 
ways so grand, with power so transcendant, in a spirit 
so parental and so tender, may surely be trusted to save 
and shield and bless with his own Godlike wisdom and 
power against spiritual foes and for the other world no 



DEATH AND CHARACTER OF MOSES. 401 

less than for this. Surely there is none like the God 
of Jeshurun who comes in the tenderness of infinite 
pity to wipe away the penitent tear ; to bind up hearts 
broken for sin ; to place underneath all feeble souls his 
own everlasting arms ; to bid away every spiritual foe 
with the mandate Destroy ; and to gather home his re- 
deemed in his own best time to his Canaan above, of 
which that ancient land of promise gives us only some 
poetic images and some illustrations of God's faithful- 
ness and love. It is quite well, therefore, to exchange 
the earthly sense of this sublime passage for its spirit- 
ual significance and transfer its imagery to that world 
whose glories are worthy of sublimer strains than even 
these. 

The death and character of Moses. 

These benedictions having been uttered, it remained 
for Moses to see the goodly land with his eyes and then 
close them in death. The record is that his vision from 
the top of Pisgah swept the whole country of Palestine 
even to the Mediterranean— a statement which implies 
miraculous power. We must either tone down the 
statement in extent, or admit a superhuman extension 
of sight — the latter being by far most probable. 

The record assumes that at his death Moses had no 
attendant save the Lord himself — a circumstance which 
throws a shade of doubt over the ultimate disposition 
of his body. According to the narrative the Lord buried 
him in a valley in the land of Moab ; yet the place of 
his burial remained unknown to mortals. Was the fact 
of his being buried at all revealed to some Hebrew 
prophet by special inspiration; or was it merely as- 
sumed as the common course of events ; or w r as his body 
really translated, as in the case of Enoch and Elijah? 
In favor of the latter supposition are two circumstances; 
viz. the allusion by Jude (v. 9) to a dispute over his 
body between Michael the archangel and the devil ; and 
his appearance together with Elijah at the transfigura- 
tion of Jesus (Mat. 17: 3). These hints comprise all 
that is known on the point or can be known at present ; 
or as we may say, all that the Lord thought it impor- 
tant to let us know. 

Altogether in keeping with the masterly vigor of 
mind manifested in the last exhortation of Moses (chap. 



402 DEATH AND CHARACTER OF MOSES. 

27-31); in the "Song" (chap. 32), and in the tribal 
blessings (chap. 33) — is the statement that although 
at the age of one hundred and twenty, "his eye was 
not dim nor his natural force abated." The Hebrew 
word suggests, instead of natural force, the idea of fresh- 
ness, youthful vigor. How r wonderfully were his powers 
of both mind and body preserved till his great work 
was done ! -The historian who wrote this last chap- 
ter says : "There arose not a prophet since in Israel like 
unto Moses"— which raises the question, How long a 
period of time is embraced in this comparison ? Was 
this remark made in the time of Samuel, or in the time 
of Ezra, or at some point between ? Or was it based 
upon the belief or the special revelation that the divine 
policy included but one Moses— all later prophets down 
to the coming of the Great Anointed being of a subordi- 
nate grade ? I do not see that the choice between these 
several alternatives can be made with absolute cer- 
tainty, and it is not specially important that we at- 
tempt to balance nicely the mere probabilities. 

We think of Moses (as of Paul, Isaiah, Daniel) as a 
sublime illustration of God's marvelous resources for 
raising up great men for great occasions. Where shall 
we set the limit to these resources ? True, these great 
men die (unless they may be translated), but their 
names die not; their work does not die; their influ- 
ence travels onward down the ages, and will, long as 
men live on the earth. They are the world's really 
great men, belonging to a totally different order from 
the Caesars, the Alexanders, and the Napoleons, or the 
Platos and the Aristotles of the race. It may not be un- 
profitable to note that all these were modest men; meek 
above most other men; of unaspiring spirit; true to 
their divine mission, and little caring to give their 
thought to any thing else. The fact in the recorded 
history of Moses which seems to me the very gem of his 
life was that God's proposal, twice made to him, to cut 
off all Israel and make of him a great nation (Ex. 32 : 
10 and Num. 14 : 12) did not get from him a moment's 
attention. He never even alluded to it. But as the 
Lord seemed to overlook the glory of his own name be- 
fore the nations, Moses took the responsibility (boldly, 
shall we say ?) of reminding him as to this point. Ap- 
parently his soul was so much absorbed in this line of 



THE MOSAIC SYSTEM AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 403 

considerations — the glory of God as before the nations 
of the earth — that he could not let it drop from his 
range of view. Hence Moses was mighty (almost om- 
nipotent we may say) in prayer. It would seem to 
have been the Lord's special purpose to bring out this 
prime quality of his religious character and set it in 
sunlight before all future ages — an illustration of the 
fact that the great men of all time are mighty with God in 
prayer. They know the secret of communion with God. 

They have easy, unrestricted access to his throne. 

One blemish — nay rather, one sin, stands on the record 
of his life in his own hand-writing; one sad, humil- 
iating fact mars his history — viz. that at Kadesh his 
sensibilities to himself were too keen ; that for the mo- 
ment, self threw even his God into the shade, and he 
cried out : " Ye rebels ; must we fetch you water from 
this rock"? True, the complaints of Israel were se- 
verely cruel as against Moses • but how much more so 
against God ! And if Moses had thought and felt much 
less as to himself and much more of God, he had passed 
through this stern ordeal unhurt. From that point on- 
ward this sin could not pass altogether out of his mind. 
It had been the aspiration of his life to see the goodly 
land of Canaan and to plant his children — the great 
Hebrew nation — there with his own hand and see them 
with his own eyes in their glorious home ! We sympa- 
thize in his disappointment and trial in that he must 
die short of Canaan. But this is not quite a sinless 
w r orld. The painful experiences of imperfection force 
themselves into the best Christian lives. There is a 
better life beyond ! 

The Mosaic system and the future life. 

The question often comes up in even the most candid 
and honest minds : Why is the Pentateuch silent, or at 
least, so nearly silent as to the rewards and punishments 
of the future life ? Moreover, there is a class of crit- 
ics w T ho are fain to decry the Hebrew people as almost 
contemptibly low in point of knowledge, culture, and 
civilization, and who are wont to deny that the Mosaic 
system, civil or religious, has any allusion to the future 
life or even assumes its existence. From this sup- 



404 THE MOSAIC SYSTEM AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

posed fact, they infer that the Hebrew people and even 
Moses himself had no knowledge of the future life. 
In briefly discussing this subject, I propose, 

1. To qualify somewhat the absolute statement — No 
allusion to the future life or assumption of its existence. 

2. To give some reasons for placing the Theocracy 
mainly on the basis of temporal rewards and punish- 
ments. 

3. To maintain that Moses and the patriarchs knew 
and believed in the future life as one of rewards and 
punishments. 

1. I propose to qualify somewhat the absolute state- 
ment — " No allusion to the future life and no assump- 
tion of its existence." 

Here I call attention to the remarkable fact that 
there are several statutes ivithout penalties— -left simply 
upon the consciences of men and upon their sense of 

the fear of God. As to those who violate the third of 

the ten commandments, it is simply said, " The Lord 
will not hold him guiltless " ; but it is not intimated 
that any due punishment should befall him in the pres- 
ent life. The statutes touching this sin stand also 
without penalties. Correspondingly the statutes forbid 
perjury ; but they seem to leave the sanctity of the sol- 
emn oath upon the conscience and upon men's fear 
of God. So of the precept, "Thou shalt not revile 
the judges, nor curse the rulers of thy people" (Ex. 
22 : 28). 

Now it scarcely need be suggested that human laws 
without penalties are mere puerilities — virtually no 
laws at all. Suppose under any human government, 
sundry statutes were left without penalties, the law 
saying only, "he shall bear his iniquity"; "his sin 
shall be upon him " : Would not the whole body of law- 
less, law-breaking men say in their heart, What of 
that? What then? Every violator of human law 
knows well enough that there is nothing to fear from it 
beyond the grave. If human law will only let them 
have their way in this world, they would scoff at the 

thought of its penalties in the next. Now my point is 

that the Hebrew statutes did not leave the law-break- 
er's conscience in this attitude. The man who scorned 
those statutes because they stood without penalties in 
this world had, something to think of for the ivorld to come. 



THE MOSAIC SYSTEM AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 405 

Those statutes, left without penalties for this life were 
not by any means for that reason powerless. So far 
from being powerless, they were in many minds more 
terrible than any other statutes. Was it of no account 
to them that God had said — "His sin shall be upon 
him" and "he shall bear his iniquity"? Did they not 
know that " it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands 
of the living God" — fearful, moreover, not because he 
might bring trouble on them in time, but because 
there is an after-life and the same dreadful God is 
there — terrible to those who have defied his authority 

and scorned his law ? Therefore the statement that 

this Hebrew code did in no manner assume the exist- 
ence of an after-life and of a God terrible to the sinner 
there, must be somewhat modified. 

2, I am to assign some reasons for putting this Theocracy 
mainly on the basis of temporal rewards and punishments. 

(1.) It was to be administered chiefly by human 
agents. Human judges sat upon offenses against it, 
and human hands executed their decisions. 1 qual- 
ify these statements w T ith the words "mainly," "chiefly," 

stating this as being the case for the most part. The 

fact as to human agents being admitted, there is no 
need of further reasons for placing the administration 
of this government mainly on the basis of earthly re- 
wards and punishments — penalties in this world, not 
in the next. How could human judges award judg- 
ments for the world to come, and human hands execute 
them there ? 

(2.) God governed Israel as a nation, not as an indi- 
vidual man. Now since nations as such exist in this 
life only, it follows of necessity that all retribution that 
is truly national must be in time, not in eternity. The 
nation as such is not known in the eternal world. 
The individuals that compose the "nation have their 
own personal account to settle with God in the world 
to come ; but this has no bearing upon the government 
of God over the nation. This national government 
must be complete in time, else it remains incomplete 
forever. It may run on through many human genera- 
tions; national life may outlast scores of individual 
human lives; but God's retribution as to nations must 
be administered in this w r orld, no part lying over to the 
next. Hence when God made himself king in Jesh- 



406 THE MOSAIC SYSTEM AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

urun over the Hebrew nation, he of necessity estab- 
lished a government to be administered mainly in 
time, not in eternity ; by the rewards and penalties of 

this world— not of the next. This again would be in 

itself a sufficient reason for the fact we are accounting 
for, even if there were no other. 

(3.) This national system of government was in- 
tended to be a moral lesson for all other nations of all 
time. Hence the government must be put on the same 
basis as that of all other nations in the point of providen- 
tial retribution. As God holds every nation on earth to 
a positive retribution in time, giving them prosperity 
for their righteousness, and adversity for their violation 
of the common laws of humanity ; and as he would fain 
make his administration over Israel a cogent moral 
lesson to every other nation on this great point, he 
must needs govern Israel in this respect as he governs 
them — i. e. administering his retributions in time. 

(4.) Yet one reason more. Distinguishing carefully 
between God's providential government and his moral — 
the former being of time only ; the latter of both time 
and eternity; the former being (for our present pur- 
pose), over nations as such ; the latter over individuals 
only and not over nations — it remains to say that God 
manifestly designed his providential government over 
Israel to be suggestive, perhaps we might say typical — 
certainly illustrative of his moral government over all 
men which is not of time only, but which reaches into 
the eternal world. In the early ages of the world men 
needed some proof that God would punish sin in the 
world to come. They needed some illustrations of God's 
character as a righteous, moral governor. Therefore the 
Lord planned to put himself at the head of the Hebrew 
nation, and then in that position, to give to mankind 
some illustrations in this world of what all sinners are 
to believe and expect for themselves, not in this world 
only or chiefly, but in the world to come. He would 
make this limited government illustrate that universal 
one. He would show in the case of the Hebrew people 
under his law what all men have to expect from their 
righteous God when his moral government shall have 
had full scope and shall have administered its perfect 
retribution in the world to come. This divine policy 
is well set forth by Peter (2 Pet. 2 : 4-9) ; "For if God 



THE MOSAIC SYSTEM AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 407 

spared not the angels that sinned but cast them down 
to hell " ; , and " spared not the old world, but saved 
Noah " ; if he " turned Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, 
but delivered just Lot"; — then (we may infer), "the 
Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptation, 
and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to 
be punished." Yes, the Lord knoweth hoiv to do this, 
and he means to let all living men see that he knoweth 
how ; and see also that being a holy moral Governor, he 
can not fail to do it. He will give them occasion to 
see in his ruling over nations in time that his ruling 
over individual sinners can not be less righteous — can 
not be less retributive according to deeds done ; and 
since equal and perfect justice calls for more time than 
one human life on earth, there must be an after part to 
it, to come in w T hen death has located men in the eter- 
nal world. This designed use of a theocratic govern- 
ment over Israel to illustrate God's moral relations to 
every individual man, required an administration 
mainly in this world, in time, before human eyes ; and 
is therefore another reason for working this theocracy 

mainly with temporal rewards and punishments. 

I do not see that further reasons can be rationally called 
for. 

3. I am to rebut the inference made from the fact of 
a theocracy administered mostly in time, viz. that Moses 
and the patriarchs did not believe in or even know of a future 

li f e - 

(1.) The inference is utterly illogical. The rewards 

and penalties of the Hebrew system were of time and 
not of eternity, for other good and sufficient reasons, and not 
necessarily for the reason that the Hebrew law-giver 
and his people knew of no future life. To be of any 
force the argument must assume that if Moses had 
known of a future life he would have built this system 
upon it. But what is the proof of that ? By what right 

is that assumed ? On the contrary there are reasons 

in abundance, not to say in excess — far more than would 
be sufficient — why the theocracy should be temporal in 
its penalties, whether Moses knew or did ilot know of 
a future life. 

(2.) That Moses and the patriarchs assumed and be- 
lieved in a future life is apparent from their words. 



408 THE MOSAIC SYSTEM AND THE FUTURE LIFE. « 

Moses wrote of Enoch (Gen. 5 : 24) ; " And Enoch 
walked with God ; and he was not, for God took him." 
"Took him" where? Did not Moses know where? 
" Took him " — in what sense ? Is it even supposable 
that Moses thought this was annihilation — taking a 
godly man out of existence ? Extinguishing his being 
because he walked with God ! Is this a credible con- 
struction ? Shall it be assumed that Moses was so ig- 
norant, or so misinformed, or so little versed in logic, as 

this ? If the Lord had made this problem a special 

study— how best to teach and impress the doctrine of a 
future blessed life for the righteous who walk with God 
on earth, we can not see how he could have improved 
upon the method he actually adopted, viz. to take the 
godly Enoch from earth to heaven without dying. 

Again, Moses constantly spoke of the death of the 
godly patriarchs as a being "gathered to their 
people." He said this of Abraham (Gen. 25 : 8) ; 
of Ishmael (25 : 17) ; of Isaac (35 : 29) ; of Jacob (49 : 33). 
And he records these as Jacob's words when he supposed 
Joseph to have died : " I will go down into Sheol to my 

son mourning" (37: 35). In the face of these facts 

can it be said that Moses knew nothing of the future 
life ? Did he think the fathers — the righteous people — 
had passed by death into non-existence — into what was 

not life in any sense whatever? Again, when at the 

bush the Lord said to Moses so solemnly : " I am the 
God of thy fathers ; the God of Abraham, the God of 
Isaac, and the God of Jacob (Ex. 3 : 6), is it credible 
that Moses was so obtuse as not to see that this implied 
that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were yet living, since 
the Lord could not be the God of dead things, but only 

of living souls ? A sensible view of the case may be 

obtained thus : Suppose that Moses had replied — " Lord, 
I see not how that can be, for Abraham has been dead 
and out of existence more than two hundred years " ! 
If really Moses had no knowledge of a future life, he 
ought frankly to have made substantially this reply at 
the bush. 

(3.) In proof of their faith in the future life, is an- 
other argument, of greater force if possible than their 
words ; viz. their lives. For men sometimes say more 
than they mean, or perhaps something other than what 
they think; but their lives testify truthfully to their 



• THE MOSAIC SYSTEM AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 409 

real beliefs. Here we might expand the argument 

already suggested by the writer to the Hebrews (11 : 8- 
16), calling up to review the actual lives of the patri- 
archs; how Abraham tore himself away from home and 
kindred, and went, obeying a call believed to be from 
God, to a land before unknown; how he and his family 
sojourned as strangers there, dwelling only in tents but 
"looking for a city on beyond which hath foundations 
whose builder and maker is God " ; how they lived in 
the faith of promises to be fulfilled far in the future 
ages of time ; and how by such a life they " declared 
plainly that they were seeking another and better 

country, even an heavenly " one. But waiving this, 

the argument will be more directly in point if made on 

the case of the man Moses himself. Born a slave, it 

was little of earth that he had at his birth save the 
faith and consequent heroism of a godly mother. In 
the providence of God it fell to him to be taken — 
a beautiful babe of three months — into the family of the 
reigning Pharaoh. There he lived, trained in all the 
wisdom of Egypt, till he was full forty years old. Of 
prepossessing person and splendid' talents; of capacities 
equal to any responsibility, the honors of all Egypt lay 
before him — we might probably say — were pressing 

upon his acceptance. What did he do? The writer 

to the Hebrews answers our question on this wise: 
" When he was come to years, he refused to be called 
the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to suffer 
affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the 
pleasures of sin for a season : esteeming reproach for 

Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt." 

Was not this choice and all this course of conduct un- 
accountably strange? Did any man in his senses, 
knowing nothing of the future life, ever make such a 
choice before or since ? What ! choose affliction before 
pleasure ; reproach before the highest of earthly hon- 
ors ? What could be in the man to make such a choice 
and even carry it out in his actual life ? 

The writer of this Epistle has an explanation to sug- 
gest. He says in the outset that Moses had faith — a 
sort of faith described by himself as " the evidence of 
things not seen." Quite unlike the doctrine of the 
critics above referred to — nay squarely in the face of 
their assumptions, he holds up this Moses as a special 



410 THE MOSAIC SYSTEM AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

and illustrious example of real faith in the future life. 
" By faith Moses refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's 
daughter"; " by faith he esteemed reproach for Christ 
greater riches than Egypt's treasures — for he had re- 
spect to the recompense of the reward." Aye, he had 
his eye onward upon that glorious recompense of re- 
ward which God gives his people when the joys that 
are transient have all faded out — when the life that is 
immortal dawns on the human soul. In his view the 
pleasures of Egypt were only for a season — too short to 
be matched against the joys before him — fully believed 
in — that endure forever. 

Of this explanation, say what else men may of it, 
they must admit that it answers the purpose. It ac- 
counts for the choice Moses made of affliction before 
pleasure ; of shame before the highest of Egypt's honors. 
This explanation represents Moses to be a man of 
sense, and not a fool. Neological criticism holds him 
up to the world as void of all sense — as playing the 
part of supreme folly. Paul said — " If in this life only 
we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most misera- 
ble " (1 Cor. 15 : 19). He would have said of Moses, If 
his hope and belief as to God were of this life only — if 
he had no belief in the future life and no knowledge of 
it, then he was of all men most foolish — most void of 
that judgment and good sense which are common to 

sensible men. Therefore I claim that the life of 

Moses — the whole choice and purpose and labor of a life 
of one hundred and twenty years, witness to his full 
and glorious faith in the future life. The men who 
deny to him this faith stultify not Moses, but them- 
selves. 

(4.) It can scarcely be necessary to suggest that over 
and above the logical merits of the facts themselves, we 
have the current traditions of Jewish history and the 
authority of the inspired New Testament writers. He 
who wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews — a man of 
sense as his writings show and of surpassing elo- 
quence and power — must have spoken the current 
voice of Hebrew tradition — to say nothing (in an argu- 
ment with Neologist critics) of his unquestionable in- 
spiration from God. 

(5.) Still further, we have collateral proofs that the 
future life was known in the age of Moses. Job gave 



THE MOSAIC SYSTEM AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 411 

a grand declaration of his faith that after the perishing 
of his body he should see God (Job 19 : 25-27). Ba- 
laam, representing the thought of the ancient East, 
saw and believed in the blessedness of the righteous 

dead. And to mention no more — the wise men of 

Egypt, even before the age of Moses, believed in the 
future life of man. With scarcely a doubt they built 
their pyramids in the faith of man's immortality. 
Sepulchers with them had a special and grander signifi- 
cance because they thought of man, not as dropping at 
death into annihilation, but as having even then a 
future nobler life before him. It is more than supposa- 
ble that the art and practice of embalming the body — 
thus providing for it a sort of immortality — was really 
an outgrowth of their belief in the immortality of the 
soul .and of its returning again to its former bodily 

home. That the Egyptians held the doctrine of a 

future life and of future rewards and punishments ac- 
cording to the deeds of this earthly life, is not ques- 
tioned at all by those who are familiar with her ancient 
mythology. Symbolic representations are found which 
are affirmed to be nothing else but the personification 
of the grand principle of the immortality of the soul 
and the necessity of leading a virtuous life.* Also a 
picture "representing the trial and judgment which the 
Egyptians supposed the soul of a man to undergo be- 
fore he was allowed to enter the regions of rest and hap- 
piness.'^ R- S. Poole (in Smith's Bible Dictionary , 

on " Egypt," p. 675) says: "The great doctrines of the 
immortality of the soul, man's responsibility, and future 
rewards and punishments were taught" [in Egypt]. 
" The Egyptian religion in its reference to man was a 
system of responsibility, mainly depending on future 
rewards and punishments." "Every Israelite who 
came out of Egypt must have been fully acquainted 
with the universally recognized doctrines of the im- 
mortality of the soul, man's responsibility, and future 

rewards and punishments." Dr. J. P. Thompson, in 

supplementing this article on "Egypt," refers to Dr. 
Lepsius as having given the earliest known text of the 
[Egyptian] "Book of the Dead" "which contains the 

* Greppo's Essay, p. 235. 
t Greppo's Essay, p. 237. 



412 THE MOSAIC SYSTEM AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

important doctrines of the immortality of the soul, the 
rehabilitation of the body, the judgment of both good 
and bad, the punishment of the wicked, the justifica- 
tion of the righteous and their admission to the blessed 
state of the gods" (p. 688). See also Bib. Sacra. Oct. 
1867, p. 775, and Jany. 1869, p. 190. 

Hence we must conclude that even if it were possible 
that the Hebrews had no knowledge of the future life 
before they went to Egypt, they must have learned it 
there. Really however, the fact that this doctrine ap- 
pears in the oldest records of Egyptian antiquity proves 
that it came down from Noah— not to say from Adam. 
It was not indigenous and original with figypt. It was 
there because Egypt had retained the primitive beliefs 
of the race. 

In concluding this argument, I refer to the allusions 
which appear in the Psalms to the future life (e. g. Ps. 
17, and 37, and 49, and 73), — which speak of it not as 
being then a new revelation, just sprung upon the uni- 
versal darkness of all foregoing ages, but distinctly as 
an old doctrine, to be learned by " going into the sanc- 
tuary of God" and there hearing the old Hebrew 
scriptures publicly read; and also to be seen as illus- 
trated' and assumed in the records of God's judgments 
in time on such sinners as those of the old world, and 
of Sodom, and as Egypt's hardened king. Let it suffice 
here to specify Ps. 73, whose author says of himself: 
> " I was envious at the foolish when I saw the prosperity 
of the wicked. It was too painful for me until I went 
into the sactuary of God; then I understood their end. 
Surely thou didst set them in slippery places ; thou 
castedst them down into destruction." — a But [all un- 
like their doom] thou wilt guide me with thy counsel 
and afterward receive me to glory. Whom have I in 
heaven but thee ? And there is none upon earth that 
I desire besides thee. My flesh and my heart faileth ; 
but thou art the strength of my heart and my portion 

forever." The good men who wrote thus, and the 

worshiping congregations who sung these rapturous 
strains in their temple worship were not in utter dark- 
ness as to the final doom of the wicked, or as to the 
glorious future life of the righteous. 

In closing this volume it only remains to refer in a 



PROGRESSIVE DEVELOPMENTS OP TRUTH. 413 

word to the progressive developments of God's truth as 
manifest in these closing portions of the Pentateuch. 
Of previous points and periods in this history as devel- 
oping progress I have spoken when the scenes were 
fresh in our reading and thought ; — particularly of the 
age before the flood ; of the scenes in the life of Jacob 
and Joseph ; of the scenes of the Exodus and at Sinai ; 

of the civil code and also of the religious Institutes. 

The few incidents of history during the forty years of 
wilderness life bring us new lessons, some exceedingly 
instructive in regard to the intercessory prayers of 
Moses ; many sadly painful, touching the unbelief, the 
murmuring, the sensuality, and the idolatrous tenden- 
cies of Israel. If it were not that apostasies from God 
occur in our own age, not at all less guilty considering 
the light sinned against, though less revolting perhaps 
to the current religious sentiments of the age, we might 
perhaps afford to pass these historic developments with 
little notice. Alas, that they should reveal sins of the 
human heart which it so much behooves us to study 
for our own admonition ! 

The book of Deuteronomy is an acquisition to the 
moral forces of the Pentateuch. Speaking now spec- 
ially of its first eleven chapters and of its last nine ; 
i. e. of the review w T hich Moses gives of the scenes of 
Sinai and of his accumulation of predicted woes and of 
appeals at once tender and terrible in the last chapters, 
it is not easy to over-estimate their moral power. Let 
us hope that they thrilled the very heart of that gen- 
eration and toned up their religious life w T ith impulses 
not only deep and strong but abiding. That generation, 
then about to enter Canaan under Joshua, was unques- 
tionably the best, morally, which appears throughout 
the entire history of Israel. For proof of this estimate 
of them it must suffice to .refer to the spirit manifested 
in Josh. 1 : 16-18 and in the entire scenes of Josh. 22, 
and indeed in the history throughout this book of Joshua. 

Leaving Egypt while yet young or wilderness born ; 

mostly uncontaminated with her idolatries and pollu- 
tions of moral life, looking upon the scenes of the Exo- 
dus and of Sinai with young eyes and susceptible souls ; 
trained under Moses forty years ; taking the ritual of 
religious worship in its freshness, with hearts, let us 
hope in a good measure tender to its first strong im- 



414 PROGRESSIVE DEVELOPMENTS OF TRUTH. 

pressions — they give us certainly the best fruits of this 
wonderful moral and religious training. So many 
fearers of God — so large a host imbued with the spirit 
of obedience to God's authority — the world had never 
seen before. They were prepared of God for the con- 
quest of Canaan. They are living witnesses that the 
discipline of those desert wanderings was not in vain — 
witnesses also to the moral and spiritual forces of the 
new revelations which God made of himself during 
those forty years from Egypt to Canaan. 






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Rev. Dr. FATJSSET, York, England, the Commentator. 
* I know no exposition of Scripture so terse, so suggestive, and yet so full and so 
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